![]() ![]() These typically cover stenography as well as courtroom procedure and terminology, technical dictation and voice recording technology. The trainingĬourt reporters are trained at specialized schools. If that all sounds Greek to you, read on for a closer look at the particulars of court reporting in Phoenix, AZ. The answer is both simpler and more complex than you’d think: court reporters are trained on highly specialized machines that cut down on typing out full words in favor of sounds. How does anyone keep up with the speed and technicality of the proceedings without sacrificing accuracy? Are they superhuman? Like a tennis match, an examination involves two major players, but the stakes are often far higher. If you’ve ever watched courtroom proceedings, either in person or on television, you might have wondered just how court reporters can type as fast as the people talking. THOUGH THE SDSAB DOES ITS BEST, THESE COLUMNS ARE EDITED BY ED ZOTTI, NOT CECIL, SO ACCURACYWISE YOU'D BETTER KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED.Secrets Revealed: How Court Reporters Type So Fast Decem8:19 pm Published by Writer Leave your thoughts Send questions to Cecil via REPORTS ARE WRITTEN BY THE STRAIGHT DOPE SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD, CECIL'S ONLINE AUXILIARY. SdStaff VegForLife, Straight Dope Science Advisory Board ![]() And if that doesn’t interest you either, maybe you should just stick to Judge Judy. In case a career in court reporting bores you, you might want to look into something called “high speed text entry.” This is a new professional field which uses a shorthand machine to get information into a computer database faster and more efficiently than the keyboard used by traditional word processors. Apparently the different state certification boards have different speeds at which you must be able to write, but none is higher than 225wpm. To be eligible for the state examination, given four times a year in Austin, a student must be able to write at least 225 words per minute at 95% – 98% accuracy and pass all academic courses. Once you’ve completed the course, you’re ready to be licensed by the Court Reporters State Certification Board (if you stay in Texas, that is other states, presumably, have similar bureaucracies). (They don’t mention if the longer stay is due to lesser ability or the necessity of bussing tables at the local Denny’s to earn tuition money). The college notes that a few students have graduated in less than two years, but three-plus years is more typical. The skilled shorthand reporter mentioned above could record 38,880,000 words in that period of time, but there’s probably a learning curve that brings the actual number of words reported down substantially during the actual training time. The Professional Court Reporting College in Dallas, Texas, has a training program that is estimated at 2,700 class hours. A skilled shorthand reporter can handle sustained speech at the rate of four words per second doing the math, that yields a whopping 240 words per minute, which is substantially faster than most people speak.Īs you might expect, this skill is not something one picks up overnight. By touching one or more keys, the reporter captures the sounds of words in a phonetic code with each line of characters representing one sound. It looks something like a small typewriter, but it has only 22 keys, including numerals. The machine to which you refer is known as a stenotype machine. That Judge Judy really gets my heart pumping too. What is this thing? Jonathan P., Lexington, KY Not having spent much time in court myself (not yet, anyway) I have never been able to check this out personally. It looks like an adding machine, and it certainly isn’t a standard typewriter. Dear Straight Dope: I was watching yet another thrilling courtroom drama the other day, and I noticed once again the little machine that the court reporter uses. ![]()
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