BUILDING SPEED #7

Let’s talk about brief forms. "Brief forms"—their benefits/detriments—are a hotly-debated subject, with very strong opinions. The extremists on either side of the subject are just about as far apart as two opinions could possibly be: Side 1 says: Brief forms shouldn’t even be introduced during theory; Side 2 says: Never teach a student to write a word out if a brief form is available.

Can’t get much further apart than that! <VBG>

Another interesting phenomenon about brief forms is that one reporter may say, "Oh, I use scads of brief forms," but when you look at their actual notes, they use fewer brief forms than the reporter who claims, "I write almost everything out." Go figure!

All I can do is give you my opinion and tell you what I’ve seen during 30 years of professional experience, and then duck when the bricks start flying<gg>

If when you started investigating attending court reporting school you had been told that you would be learning a totally new language, and that one of the course requirements was that you must memorize 5,000 abbreviations for words, and memorize them so thoroughly that you could recall them and actually write the abbreviations in this new language at 240 words per minute, you would probably have thought that requirement was so absurd, so impossible, that you would have made a hasty exit and never looked back. But that’s exactly what many students attempt to do.

WHY students (even some working reporters) feel they NEED a brief form for every word of more than two syllables is an interesting question in itself and one we’ll talk about later.

But the question right now is: IS MEMORIZING AND USING EVERY POSSIBLE BRIEF FORM THE FASTEST WAY TO GET TO GRADUATION SPEED? And the answer is: NO!

The next question is: BUT AREN’T I GOING TO EVENTUALLY NEED ALL THESE BRIEF FORMS IN ORDER TO HAVE ENOUGH SPEED TO BE A REALLY GREAT COURT REPORTER, OR MAYBE EVEN COMPETE IN SPEED CONTESTS? And again the answer is: NO! (Example: One former winner of the national speed contest has stated that he uses brief forms on the job; but he DOESN’T use them when writing speed contests because he doesn’t have time to THINK about them. There’s a very important message there!)

Brief forms for high-frequency words, even some fairly infrequent words with a construction which makes them particularly awkward to stroke out, can be absolutely invaluable—IF they’re memorized and practiced to the point where they’re totally automatic. You’d never catch ME stroking out "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," "vague and ambiguous," "manufacture" etc.<gg>

But writing machine shorthand at court reporting speeds is much more dependent on MENTAL agility than manual dexterity. Memorized brief forms reduce the number of strokes—but they add SIGNIFICANTLY to the mental agility required. And every individual has to decide how many brief forms THEY can memorize and use successfully without placing too much of a burden on mental agility. (Remember our speed champion who can write FASTER without his brief forms than with them?)

When I was in school, I was like a lot of you: It was obvious to me that a one-stroke brief was faster than stroking words out, that briefs were the fastest way to speed and graduation, and I never practiced my homework without going through it first and underscoring every brief and bracketing every phrase to make certain I always used the shortcut. UNTIL friends who were working reporters told me: Some briefs are great; but unless they’re for really high-frequency words, you won’t use the majority of them when you start working—they don’t come up often enough to be able to recall them instantly and you don’t have time to THINK about them; it’s much more natural and much FASTER to just stroke them out. You’re wasting all this valuable time memorizing brief forms you’ll never use once you start working, and you could be using your time to LEARN TO WRITE and build speed.

I also had a favorite "mentor"—an exceptional court reporter who finished school in San Francisco in six months, who had 20 years experience and the reputation of being able to write difficult medical and technical testimony with one hand tied behind his back, who’s favorite trick was to sit there casually finishing his cigarette AFTER the examination had started, and if anyone looked at him inquiringly, he’d grin and say, "Oh, that’s okay. Go ahead. I’ll catch up." And the lesson he repeated and repeated and repeated to me was: The best advice I can give you is, "ALWAYS write behind the speaker. And the longer you write, the LONGER you write." Meaning, the more experienced you become, the better writer you become, the fewer shortcuts you use and the more you just write everything out.

I used to have a company which had over 100 working reporters as clients, and I’ve had the privilege of personally reading the shorthand notes of some of the best possible writers, including speed contest writers. And I can say without any reservations that the best writers I have ever seen—fastest, cleanest, capable of writing almost unimaginably difficult material—use a minimum of brief forms.

I’ve also had the unfortunate experience of seeing students who couldn’t be dissuaded from the "brief forms are the key to speed" philosophy graduate, go to work, and QUIT after one month, six months, etc. They didn’t realize that it was one thing to have enough time to be able to recall and use all those memorized brief forms when they were writing at 60 wpm, 150 wpm, even 200 wpm while they were in school; but it was an entirely different matter to try to recall and use them at 240 wpm under the pressure of writing on the job. And because they had been so totally focused on and so reliant on using these memorized brief forms, which they now couldn’t remember fast enough to use at working speeds and under job pressures, they froze and couldn’t respond to stroking the words out.

Brief forms for high-frequency words, memorized and practiced to the point where they are totally automatic, can be an invaluable asset and can enhance your speed. But At 200 wpm, a brief form which takes a second to recall REDUCES your speed. The number of briefs you can process successfully at 180 wpm in school may cause a short circuit at 240 wpm on the job.

IF a brief form is for a high-frequency word, IF when you see the brief form it immediately brings to mind the word it represents so you have little likelihood of misreading it—or worse yet, forgetting what it stands for, IF the fingering is simple enough that you can assimilate the brief form into your writing to the point where it’s totally automatic and is in fact faster to RECALL and stroke at court reporting speeds than stroking the word out, then by all means use it. Just remember that when selectively and wisely used, brief forms can increase your speed; when not assimilated to the point where they’re automatic, they can actually detract from your speed. Brief forms reduce the number of strokes and ease the burden on your fingers, but they increase the demands upon the mental agility of a sometimes very weary brain.

YOU’RE the only one who can decide how many brief forms YOU can use successfully.