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From Cecil's Mailbag by the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board
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. It looks like an adding machine,
and it certainly isn't a standard typewriter. Not having spent much time in court myself
(not yet, anyway) I have never been able to check this out personally. What is this thing?
--Jonathan P., Lexington, KY
SDSTAFF Veg replies:
You're not alone, Jonathan. That Judge Judy really gets my heart pumping too.
The machine to which you refer is known as a stenotype machine. It looks something like a
small typewriter, but it has only 22 keys, including numerals. 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. 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.
As you might expect, this skill is not something one picks up overnight. The Professional
Court Reporting College in Dallas, Texas, has a training program that is estimated at
2,700 class hours. 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 college
notes that a few students have graduated in less than two years, but three-plus years is
more typical. (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).
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). 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. Apparently the different state certification
boards have different speeds at which you must be able to write, but none is higher than
225wpm.
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. And if that doesn't interest you
either, maybe you should just stick to Judge Judy.
--SDStaffVeg
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board
Cecil's Mailbag is researched and written by members of the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board, Cecil's online auxiliary. Although the SDSAB does its best, these articles are edited by Ed Zotti, not Cecil, so accuracywise you'd better keep your fingers crossed.
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