Court reporting teacher turned documentary filmmaker Marc Greenberg’s SXSW premiere “For the Record” follows a group of stenographers as they strive to attain the Guinness title of World’s Fastest Court Reporter. Here’s the official synopsis: “Mark
Kislingbury is considered the ‘rock star’ of the steno world, the current record holder at 360 words per minute. His challengers include Dee Boenau, a driven captioner from Florida, and Stan Sakai, an EDM-loving CART provider who shatters the traditional idea of what a court reporter is. As we track their paths to the Guinness attempt, we explores the ‘steno culture,’ as experienced by stenographers, through such events as 9/11, the Nuremberg trials and other high-profile courtroom moments,
while reviewing the history of these ‘keepers of the record.'” A Biggen Idea production, the documentary premieres Saturday, March 14 in Austin. Here’s an exclusive clip. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
Photo: Hocus-Focus/Getty Images A decent typist can do 80 words per minute. Mark Kislingbury can hit more than four times that speed. He’s the fastest in the world, and getting faster. The 53-year-old Texan holds the world record for the “fastest real-time court reporter,” a standard he set in 2004 when he transcribed a staggering 360 words in one minute, with 97 percent accuracy. If you’ve ever watched a trial in a courtroom, you’ve probably seen a court reporter, sometimes called a stenographer, sitting near the witness stand and quietly typing away, making an official record of every word that’s uttered. In order to keep up with the speed of human speech for hours on end, court reporters use a special keyboard — a steno machine — that allows them to type whole words and phrases in single strokes. For years now, Mark Kislingbury has been the master of the craft. Kislingbury is the most decorated champion of the annual competitions put on by the National Court Reporters Association, the winner of seven speed contests and four “real-time” contests — a slightly slower event focused more on accuracy. Between 2001 and 2010, he won the championship seven times, becoming known as the Michael Jordan of court reporting. Now, 12 years after he set his world record, he’s gunning for another history-making run. He’s training to go even faster, and hoping to hit 370 words per minute in the near future. In an interview this week from his home in Houston, he compared court reporting to being a professional athlete or concert pianist, quoted Aristotle on how to achieve excellence, and shared his choice for best steno machine. (You can see him in action about 45 seconds into this trailer for the court-reporting documentary For the Record.) Tell us about your world record! After you missed the record the first year by just a couple of percentage points, what did you do to get your accuracy
up? How did you first get into court reporting? What inspired you to devote yourself to this? A steno machine has just a couple of rows of unlabeled keys. How does it work? And how can you type so many words so fast with that thing? Your fingers just physically top out on any keyboard — you’re going to hit that top speed of how many pushes you can do in a second. Since I’m doing whole words and groups of words instead of syllables, when I top out, I’m typing more words per minute. I might have memorized 100,000 unique short forms, like “SPIBL.” For example, I can write “how many” as “HOUM” and “how long” as “HOUNG.” Lots of court reporters can transcribe quickly. How did you become the fastest? What does it feel like to compete? What are you thinking about when you’re going that fast? What is a good steno speed?Court reporters are the ones on which attorneys, judges and others rely on for complete and accurate records of all judicial proceedings. To do so, these reporters need to be able to stenotype at speeds of about 225 wpm. And you thought typing at 100 wpm was fast – and it is, on a typical keyboard.
Who is the best stenographer in India?Ashutosh Ranjan is world famous trainer of shorthand.
How many words can a stenographer type per minute?Simply, a shorthand writer. Modern-day stenographers use shorthand typing machines called stenotypes. These machine marvels allow stenographers to type at rates exceeding 300 words per minute. In comparison, an average speaking speed is about 150 words per minute.
How can I make my steno faster?You can increase your speed by reading well written transcriptions daily. Because when you read a transcription, you remember the outline of that word instead of its spelling. This will help you a lot in improving your speed in shorthand. Don't practice English to shorthand, practice shorthand to English.
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