BUILDING SPEED #3

Everyone should take pride in the ACCURACY with which they write, but having bragging rights about your stroking accuracy is the LEAST important reason for keeping your notes clean.

First of all, zealously protecting your stroking ACCURACY is the fastest, surest, least frustrating way to BUILD SPEED.

When we perform the exact same physical action repeatedly, after enough repetitions we create what is called "muscle memory": Our subconscious actually records the exact position/tension of every muscle/tendon/sinew involved in performing that action and stores that information in our subconscious memory. And after enough repetitions, that muscle memory becomes so strong that we can perform that action with incredible accuracy without looking, without thinking, without hesitating. It becomes totally automatic. (It’s a good thing this phenomenon of "muscle memory" exists or we’d have trouble walking, talking, or doing any one of a thousand other automatic physical movements we perform every day.)

When we always execute each stroke ACCURATELY, we fairly quickly program in the correct muscle memory for every fingering position on the keyboard—even the progression of fingering movements for multi-stroke words or high-frequency series of words. And with enough repetition, that muscle memory becomes so strong that our fingers will just AUTOMATICALLY move to the correct position or sequence of positions. And they’ll do it with far greater accuracy and far greater speed than if we were "consciously" directing our fingers. So when we learn to trust this muscle memory and these automatic responses, we start letting go of more and more conscious control—and the more conscious control we relinquish, the faster we can write.

Without this phenomenon of muscle memory and automatic responses, we’d have no accomplished musicians, no high-speed typists, no court reporters. We cannot THINK fast enough to consciously control the necessary physical movements; we have to rely on muscle memory and automatic responses in order to become a high-speed typist, a concert pianist, or write machine shorthand at court reporting speeds.

Now, stop for a minute and think about what happens when you DON’T stroke accurately because you’re just plain careless or you’re trying to write at speeds which are so unreasonable that you’re "scrambling" all over the keyboard. If you’re not stroking with near total accuracy, you’re NOT programming in the muscle memory and automatic responses which you MUST have to eventually be able to write at court reporting speeds. The only thing you’re "programming" into your subconscious is a lot of contradictions and confusion—which you’ll pay a very dear price for later in trying to build speed.

I know, I know. Some uninformed teachers still instruct students to "Just get something down for everything you hear. You can clean up your notes when you get more speed." I’m sorry, but that advice has created more frustration for students, ruined the potential of more students, and is responsible for more students being unable to reach graduation speeds than any other single thing I can think of. Would you send your child to a typing teacher or a piano teacher who taught with that same philosophy? I don’t think so!

It’s been my experience that students who sacrifice accuracy for speed inevitably hit a plateau in the 170 to 200 wpm area. They’ve hit a brick wall because they’ve reached the level where they can no longer THINK fast enough to consciously direct their fingers to the right keys. But they can’t write WITHOUT thinking of every finger movement because they haven’t created the necessary muscle memory and automatic responses which would move their fingers to the right positions without thinking, they can’t trust their fingers to respond correctly WITHOUT conscious control. Repairing the damage at this point is such a frustrating, time-consuming process, many students don’t have the stamina or the resources to stick it out, and they drop out.

If I can convince you of nothing else, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE remember that always writing with near perfect stroking accuracy is ultimately the FASTEST, surest, least frustrating way to get to court reporting speeds.

Just how accurately is it reasonable for you to expect to be able to write? If you train yourself correctly FROM THE VERY BEGINNING, you can write shorthand notes with the same impeccable accuracy as an excellent typist types or an excellent pianist plays music. I’ve seen students write five-minute tests at 200 wpm with no more than four or five stroking errors—with one particular student, NO stroking errors.

Historically, machine shorthand has most-frequently been taught with all the emphasis on SPEED and little concern for accuracy. Why court reporting teachers have assumed that we alone are magically exempt from the proven dynamics of developing keyboarding skills on every other keyboard in the world is beyond me. Frankly, I don’t know whether it stems from arrogance or ignorance. But the truth is that we are NOT exempt; if WE want to be as successful in developing skills on OUR keyboard, we have to observe the same principles: stroke with maximum accuracy, develop the necessary muscle memory and automatic responses, make sure we stroke as efficiently as possible, do finger drills to increase our finger control, strength, and dexterity, and practice, practice, practice, and SPEED is the natural result.

Placing emphasis on speed and ignoring accuracy has never been an intelligent way to teach machine shorthand—but it was survivable before CAT because with a good enough memory and enough imagination, we could READ through the garbage and produce a record. Today’s reality is a totally different story. Computers don’t READ through garbage; they translate it "like it is." And if your strokes don’t EXACTLY match a dictionary entry, they simply don’t translate.

When you’re practicing at home, you should ideally write material that is 10 wpm above your present speed—and certainly no more than 20 wpm above your present speed. You want material that makes you STRETCH as far as possible, while maintaining your stroking accuracy and rhythm. So what are you supposed to do when you’re in class and your teacher is dictating at speeds so far beyond your ability that you can’t possibly keep up? You grit your teeth, you maintain your stroking accuracy, you maintain your stroking rhythm; and no matter how far behind you get, you keep writing until you no longer remember what was said next. Then you pick up with the next word you hear and continue writing. And you have to swallow your pride because you’ll probably have "drops" and your classmates with garbage notes might not have drops. And I know that’s very hard to do and how much you’ll hate it. But I can assure you that you’ll have the last laugh. You’ll be the one graduating as a realtime writer, not a garbage writer. You’ll be the one with the best and highest-paying jobs available to you; you’ll be the one who is comfortable on the job and really enjoys your career; not the one who’s stressed out and supporting the antacid manufacturers.

Which brings us to the other very important reasons why ACCURACY should always be your first priority.

I don’t care if you can write at 300 wpm with one hand tied behind your back: if you can’t write accurately, YOU DON’T HAVE A MARKETABLE SKILL. You can forget about being a captionist, a CART reporter, or a realtime court reporter (the CRR test requires 96% stroking accuracy: not transcription accuracy; STROKING accuracy). If you’re thinking you’ll get your act together and clean up your notes after you get out of school and that while you’re doing that you can just work for a deposition firm on jobs that don’t need to be realtime, or maybe even an officialship where a lot of what you write won’t even have to be transcribed, you need a good reality check. The good memory and vivid imagination which might make it possible for you to read through garbage if you can run right to the typing/computer lab and immediately transcribe your school or certification tests won’t help you much in deciphering garbage notes when preparing transcripts ordered five weeks, five months, or five years after you wrote them.

Accuracy is money in your pocket. The more accurate your notes, the less editing you have to do, the faster you can produce a final work product, the more jobs you can write, the more money you can make.

And let’s not forget job stress. There’s always been a lot of conversation about how stressful court reporting can be. I think there’s a big distinction between "pressure" and "stress." Schedules, deadlines, difficult witnesses, surly attorneys—those are job pressures very much like those we all have to deal with in ANY responsible, well-paying job. "Stress" is knowing you’re writing garbage notes and that this attorney is notorious for asking for readbacks. "Stress" is when the clerk tells you the jury is waiting for you to read back two hours of testimony from yesterday afternoon’s session. If you write garbage notes, THAT’S BIG TIME STRESS, it’s time to grab the Maalox bottle. If you write clean notes, it’s a walk in the park.

Remember, ACCURACY is the fastest, surest, least frustrating way to reach court reporting speeds. It also means the best job opportunities, the best income, and the least amount of stress.