Tips for Court Reporting Students

So you've decided you want to enter the exciting world of court reporting, and join the ranks of the eccentric group of us who make our living taking down verbatim, word for word, what people say, at speeds of up to 260 words a minute.

You've enrolled in court reporting school and are studying not only machine shorthand, but also law, grammar, punctuation, transcript preparation and the like. It may feel like it's going to be a long haul, but the rewards are absolutely worth it, when you finally have become certified and are able to report depositions, trials, hearings, arbitrations, and earn excellent income doing so.

In this article I want to recommend certain things I feel every court reporting student should study on top of the school curriculum.

I know, I hear you sigh, who has the time to do that?! We all have extremely busy lives and you wonder how in the world you can fit one more thing in.

But when you enter the world of court reporting, you are considered a professional, and you'd better know your business (the business of the English language) extremely well in order to stand out and shine in your chosen field.

There is so much that can come at you when you're reporting, unexpected things such as witnesses who have only a poor grasp of the English language, who speak with an accent, or people who're extremely versed in their expertise, such as, say, pneumatic rig safety control, just to pick something out of the hat, which you probably know nothing about, and yet you are required as the reporter to not only keep up with every single word being said in this "foreign language," but also, when you're preparing the transcript, to know proper spellings and terms.

So being a reporter requires more than just general knowledge of the English language and where to insert a comma or a semicolon. The best reporters I know have a broad general knowledge of many different things, including literature, geography, history, world affairs, etc.