August 10
2012
August 9
2012
Court Reporting Requirements in Pennsylvania
In honor of the NCRA conference being held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania this week, I decided to research the requirements of becoming a court reporter in the State of Pennsylvania.
The uniform rules governing court reporting and transcripts for Pennsylvania is found in Chapter 50, Article V, Section 10 of the Constitution of Pennsylvania. Rule 5000.3 of this section of the code lists the qualifications of reporters, as follows:
“(a) After the effective date of these rules, no person shall be hired by a court as a shorthand reporter unless he or she is capable of recording proceedings at a 95% accuracy level at the following speeds:
(1) Literary or jury charge at 180 w.p.m.
(2) Medical testimony (two voices) 200 w.p.m.
(3) Ordinary testimony (up to four voices) 225 w.p.m.
(b) Each applicant must have a minimum of two years practical experience in taking and transcribing legal material and shall be required to pass a test establishing at least the foregoing qualifications, conducted by the court seeking to employ the reporter, prior to employment. A shorthand reporter may be provisionally employed for a period of not more than six months or until the next convenient certification exam. A reporter who holds a NSRA Certificate of Proficiency or Certificate of Merit shall be deemed prima facie qualified and need not be examined.
(c) A person may be employed by a court to record testimony by electronic means, such as multi-track audio recording devices, provided that the equipment incorporates the features required by the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts for such use, and has been approved by the president judge or his designee. Prior to the employment or assignment of any person to operate and monitor such equipment, the district court administrator shall require proof that the reporter:
(1) is fully familiar with the controls of the equipment;
(2) has adequate hearing acuity to assure a high quality recording;
(3) will insist on clarity of the recording; and
(4) can quickly diagnose and correct routine malfunctions.”
August 9
2012
Dictionary Challenge: Day Two
Today, I added 60 words to my dictionary. One less word than yesterday, but still 10 more than my daily goal.
I started the challenge yesterday, with a total of 60,600 entries in my dictionary. I’ll see what the total is at the end of the challenge in 28 days.
Happy Dictionary Building,
Elsie Villega
August 8
2012
Video: Irregular Verbs
August 8
2012
Dictionary Builder: Microfiche
Microfiche is described as “a sheet of microfilm containing rows of images of printed paper.”
While this word is relatively commonly-known, it wasn’t in my steno dictionary, and it is not a word that I ever recall hearing in any school dictation thus far. Therefore, I happily added it to my dictionary.
Machine Briefs:
Option #1: microfiche= MAOIK/ROE/FIFP
Option #2: microfiche= MAOIK/FIFP
Option #3: microfiche= MAOIK/ROE/FAOERB
Option #4: microfiche= MAOIK/FAOERB
August 7
2012
Dictionary Challenge: Day One
It’s the first day of my dictionary challenge, and all is going well. Today, I added 61 words to my dictionary. Therefore, I exceeded my minimum goal of 50 words.
I added three suffix endings (including T*I for the “-ty” ending. I added the asterisk to avoid confusion with the phrase “at this”), a bunch of words starting with the letter “a” (since I started at the beginning of my dictionary- lol), some medical terms, and some words that I got from practicing a few lits.
SIDEBAR: I wonder how long it will take me to get through all of the “a” words in my dictionary.
Happy Dictionary Building,
Elsie Villega
August 6
2012
30-Day Dictionary Challenge
As a student who is looking to start working in 2013, I am well aware of the importance of dictionary building. Therefore, I decided to do a 30-day dictionary challenge. My challenge is to add AT LEAST 50 new words to my dictionary EVERY DAY! (Yes, even on the days when I’m in Philly for the convention. Lol.)
Feel free to join me on this challenge. You might need to alter the goal of 50 words per day to suit your own standards.
I plan to get words from text books, biographies, news stories, and dictionaries. I will post daily updates on my tally of words for the day. Feel free to share your tally too, or you can be an invisible challenge participant…It doesn’t matter, as long as we triumphantly progress in the task of building our dictionaries.
[SIDEBAR: Don’t forget to backup your dictionaries on a flash drive, or alternative storage source, as you build them.]
For the love of steno!
Happy Dictionary Building,
Elsie Villega
August 3
2012
Coming Monday…The Dictionary Challenge
I’m going to start a 30-day dictionary challenge on Monday. As a student, who will soon be going out into the work-world, I’m challenging myself to build my dictionary. I am currently at, approximately, 60,450 entries. It is my goal to reach AT LEAST 67,000 entries before the year is over.
I’ll be posting details to the challenge on Monday.
Have a Great Weekend,
Elsie Villega
August 3
2012
Friday Phrases
August 2
2012
How Many Words Are There In The English Language?
Being that I’m on a dictionary-building mission right now, I decide to google how many words are in the English language so that I would know how far I had to go.
According to most sources, it is difficult to determine an accurate number. This is due to there being words that have multiple meanings, and therefore can be used in several different ways…What would the count be in those situations? Would the word be counted once, or per its different uses? There are also questions on how to tally: commonly used phrases, words of non-English origin that have crept into English vernacular, slang words, common abbreviations, derivatives, and words that are no longer commonly used.
According to Wikipedia: “The Oxford English Dictionary lists over 250,000 distinct words, not including many technical, scientific, and slang terms.”
According to Oxford Dictionary, their second edition contains: “Full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries.
With these listed stats, I anticipate having a good bulk of all of the English words in my steno dictionary before the end of 2013.
Happy dictionary building!
