I decided not to wear my wrist supports anymore. It seemed like they were making my hands hurt more. My hands aren't pain-free, but they're kind of "medium" at this point. I'm pretty comfortable using the ReportIt, but I still have a lot of pain in my arms when I write. I think the ReportIt is the way to go, though. It just makes sense that having your arms supported would be better.
I'm still waiting for the Gen O IE. Upgrading cost about half as much as the machine I just bought in May, so I hope it's better somehow. Originally, they hoped to ship them in November, but they haven't even hardened the mold on the pods yet, so who knows when they'll be out.
There was a discussion on depoman about whether you can start a sentence with a conjuction, like "and" or "but" in order to break up ridiculously long sentences. Someone said that we're taught all of these grammar rules that apply to good writing, but we're not writing - we're taking down what someone has said, and you can't always force that to conform to what would be proper writing style. I would occasionally let a sentence start with "and" or "but," but more often than not I would even go so far as to delete a period I had already stroked and add a comma and the conjunction, leading to some truly long sentences.
So, with ease of readability for the consumer in mind, I took that advice into consideration. Now when the speaker seems to have ended their sentence and the next word is a conjuction, I let the period stand. I think it does help with readability, and it even allows me to break things into paragraphs more often. It's good to have discussions about things. It seems like I work in a vacuum a lot of the time, but I can't improve my style if I don't know what other people are doing.
Showing posts with label Style. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Style. Show all posts
9.22.14
I've been coming up with briefs for some words that I felt like were taking me too long to write:
best practices - BIKTS
capacity - KAIPS
scenario - SAERN
criteria - CRAO*IR
apologize - PAO*LGZ
at the end - T*END (add DA*I for "of the day")
Bahamas - BA*EMZ
I couldn't believe how often people were saying "at the end of the day!" It takes so long to write out.
I have a new practice for when I can't make out much of what's being said, which can be a problem with remote work. Before I would just listen to see if I could catch any entire sentences or thoughts that made sense and write those, and leave out the rest. But now I write every word that I can hear, with a dash for any words I can't. I think it probably does actually help. Even if it doesn't totally express a complete thought, you can still get a sense of what the person's saying.
I still occasionally stroke "dun" when I'm trying to write "done," and I actually got to use "dun" the other day. The news anchor was talking about Facebook posts coming back to haunt you, and she said, "dun-dun-dun." I also correctly spelled tracheostomy, which I was pretty proud of. On the other side of the token, I had been doing a lot of Canadian meetings, and then I was captioning the news and the Pope started saying something in Italian, and I reflexively wrote "[ speaking in French ]". But then they said he was meeting with Rabbi Skorka, who I'd never heard of before, and I correctly guessed/fingerspelled "Skorka."
I love the Eclipse FB group, although as I learn more things it becomes a little bit less useful, since I already know a lot. There is one frustrating thing about it, though. It seems like whenever I come up with a problem, or something that would make my Eclipse experience better, and I'm pretty sure there should be a way to accomplish what I want, I make a post, and the only thing I ever get back is people saying, "Why would you want to do that anyway?" I guess I should be used to it by now, but somehow it's still irksome.
best practices - BIKTS
capacity - KAIPS
scenario - SAERN
criteria - CRAO*IR
apologize - PAO*LGZ
at the end - T*END (add DA*I for "of the day")
Bahamas - BA*EMZ
I couldn't believe how often people were saying "at the end of the day!" It takes so long to write out.
I have a new practice for when I can't make out much of what's being said, which can be a problem with remote work. Before I would just listen to see if I could catch any entire sentences or thoughts that made sense and write those, and leave out the rest. But now I write every word that I can hear, with a dash for any words I can't. I think it probably does actually help. Even if it doesn't totally express a complete thought, you can still get a sense of what the person's saying.
I still occasionally stroke "dun" when I'm trying to write "done," and I actually got to use "dun" the other day. The news anchor was talking about Facebook posts coming back to haunt you, and she said, "dun-dun-dun." I also correctly spelled tracheostomy, which I was pretty proud of. On the other side of the token, I had been doing a lot of Canadian meetings, and then I was captioning the news and the Pope started saying something in Italian, and I reflexively wrote "[ speaking in French ]". But then they said he was meeting with Rabbi Skorka, who I'd never heard of before, and I correctly guessed/fingerspelled "Skorka."
I love the Eclipse FB group, although as I learn more things it becomes a little bit less useful, since I already know a lot. There is one frustrating thing about it, though. It seems like whenever I come up with a problem, or something that would make my Eclipse experience better, and I'm pretty sure there should be a way to accomplish what I want, I make a post, and the only thing I ever get back is people saying, "Why would you want to do that anyway?" I guess I should be used to it by now, but somehow it's still irksome.
Good Ideas
I've been leaning in a new direction with my speaker IDs. I started out thinking the fewer keys I used the better, so I would do the first letter of the person's name, or the last if the first letter was already being used. But now I've found that it's better to do a predominant sound in the name, because I'm probably going to have a lot of names. It's especially good for captioning when you have to get the whole news team in there, but I actually had a CART meeting where I was given 40 speakers the other day.
Some good ones I use are AUL for Paula or Paula, AIV for Dave, O*B for Bob or Rob, O*N for John, IS for Chris, AIS for Jason; the list goes on, and it's particularly helpful if I can use the same one across jobs. Chris is one that I can pretty much guarantee is always going to be IS; and for anyone who's not familiar with my speaker IDs, it's actually GLAUL, GLAIV, etc.
There was a really inspiring thread on depoman about writing verbatim or not. A lot of people are in the camp that they don't write repeated words if they don't change the meaning of the sentence, so if the person says
"I went -- I went to the store," they only put in one "I went." Someone said they've even had attorneys comment on how nice their transcripts look because of it. I don't know why I had previously been such a stickler about getting all those repeated words in if I had time, but I realized it does look much better without them, and they don't add anything, so now I don't put them in! It saves me strokes and time, and it looks better!
I also got on a little macro-making kick for a while. Brenda on the Eclipse FB group was talking about some real time-savers she came up with for actions she does often, and I thought, "Why am I even hitting Ctrl+Shift+Pg Up and then Esc to get to the top of the document?" The first command highlights your way up there, and then I had to unhighlight. I go to the top multiple times every time I review a transcript for fixes, so I just changed my keyboard map so that "V" takes me right to the top! I have E for the end.
I also check each transcript for any time I fingerspelled A and E to check for words I might've fingerspelled that I need to get in my dictionarly, so now I just hit S and W respectively to find the next instance of those. And when I'm done checking in Eclipse, I paste the file into Word and spellcheck it. Captioning files are always in all caps, so I had to navigate to the proper settings tab to uncheck that, but now I just hit Ctrl+Space bar and it automatically does it all! It's so much easier. There are so many key combinations, there's no reason to be using the mouse or pressing multiple keys for actions you do often.
Some good ones I use are AUL for Paula or Paula, AIV for Dave, O*B for Bob or Rob, O*N for John, IS for Chris, AIS for Jason; the list goes on, and it's particularly helpful if I can use the same one across jobs. Chris is one that I can pretty much guarantee is always going to be IS; and for anyone who's not familiar with my speaker IDs, it's actually GLAUL, GLAIV, etc.
There was a really inspiring thread on depoman about writing verbatim or not. A lot of people are in the camp that they don't write repeated words if they don't change the meaning of the sentence, so if the person says
"I went -- I went to the store," they only put in one "I went." Someone said they've even had attorneys comment on how nice their transcripts look because of it. I don't know why I had previously been such a stickler about getting all those repeated words in if I had time, but I realized it does look much better without them, and they don't add anything, so now I don't put them in! It saves me strokes and time, and it looks better!
I also got on a little macro-making kick for a while. Brenda on the Eclipse FB group was talking about some real time-savers she came up with for actions she does often, and I thought, "Why am I even hitting Ctrl+Shift+Pg Up and then Esc to get to the top of the document?" The first command highlights your way up there, and then I had to unhighlight. I go to the top multiple times every time I review a transcript for fixes, so I just changed my keyboard map so that "V" takes me right to the top! I have E for the end.
I also check each transcript for any time I fingerspelled A and E to check for words I might've fingerspelled that I need to get in my dictionarly, so now I just hit S and W respectively to find the next instance of those. And when I'm done checking in Eclipse, I paste the file into Word and spellcheck it. Captioning files are always in all caps, so I had to navigate to the proper settings tab to uncheck that, but now I just hit Ctrl+Space bar and it automatically does it all! It's so much easier. There are so many key combinations, there's no reason to be using the mouse or pressing multiple keys for actions you do often.
Rejected
I got a rejection letter from one of the companies I applied to a while ago. I sent them a realtime sample from when I did meeting minutes for the water district. They said my accuracy was decent (98.7%), but they didn't want to hire me because I had too many commas. Commas! I just took it to mean that they're not looking to take any beginning CART providers under their wing, so to speak. They're only interested in hiring people who could go out and work with no modifications. Which is fine. But I really could've just written fewer commas, if I had known ahead of time.
It's something to think about in my writing, though. I do tend to put in a comma when someone pauses. I try to look at CART from a consumer standpoint, a readability standpoint. If the professor is one of those that's constantly going "right? all right?", I don't put it in. I hate hearing it all the time, so I wouldn't want to read it all the time, either. Excessive utterances like "um" and "uh" don't need to be in there, eunless I need to convey what type of speaker they are, which isn't really necessary with a professor.
I've always written punctuation. There hasn't ever been a point in my training when I didn't think it was necessary. So, of course I punctuate things. But I never really thought about having too many commas. I just figured it was the way people talked, so it was okay. But I guess I need to look at it more aggressively from a readability standpoint, and write it the way it makes the most sense, not necessarily the way it was said. If they're going on for too long, I can break it up into two sentences. If they paused in the middle of a thought, and it looks better without the comma, I don't have to write it.
On a less disappointing note, I've been impressed with a lot of words that are in my dictionary. It's fun to just stroke out names like "Gunther" and "Mahoney" however I think I should, and have them actually translate. Same thing with some technical terms, like "thermosphere" and "ventricles." The technical stuff isn't always in there, but when it's not, it either looks close enough, or I can fingerspell it.
I also had an awesome breakthrough the other day. I have to have the cursor in a certain window to stream the CART, so I thought I couldn't have Eclipse up. But I figured out that the window with the cursor in it isn't really important for me to see, and I can make it tiny, and make Eclipse big enough to see. There was a huge delay with the CART getting to the cursor window, and it made it really hard to edit as I was writing.
But now, I can watch it in Eclipse, just like when I practice. It comes up instantly, and I can fix any mistakes right away. It actually tired me out a little the first time I did it. I wound up writing more because I didn't have to wait so long to see if what I was writing came out right or not.
It's something to think about in my writing, though. I do tend to put in a comma when someone pauses. I try to look at CART from a consumer standpoint, a readability standpoint. If the professor is one of those that's constantly going "right? all right?", I don't put it in. I hate hearing it all the time, so I wouldn't want to read it all the time, either. Excessive utterances like "um" and "uh" don't need to be in there, eunless I need to convey what type of speaker they are, which isn't really necessary with a professor.
I've always written punctuation. There hasn't ever been a point in my training when I didn't think it was necessary. So, of course I punctuate things. But I never really thought about having too many commas. I just figured it was the way people talked, so it was okay. But I guess I need to look at it more aggressively from a readability standpoint, and write it the way it makes the most sense, not necessarily the way it was said. If they're going on for too long, I can break it up into two sentences. If they paused in the middle of a thought, and it looks better without the comma, I don't have to write it.
On a less disappointing note, I've been impressed with a lot of words that are in my dictionary. It's fun to just stroke out names like "Gunther" and "Mahoney" however I think I should, and have them actually translate. Same thing with some technical terms, like "thermosphere" and "ventricles." The technical stuff isn't always in there, but when it's not, it either looks close enough, or I can fingerspell it.
I also had an awesome breakthrough the other day. I have to have the cursor in a certain window to stream the CART, so I thought I couldn't have Eclipse up. But I figured out that the window with the cursor in it isn't really important for me to see, and I can make it tiny, and make Eclipse big enough to see. There was a huge delay with the CART getting to the cursor window, and it made it really hard to edit as I was writing.
But now, I can watch it in Eclipse, just like when I practice. It comes up instantly, and I can fix any mistakes right away. It actually tired me out a little the first time I did it. I wound up writing more because I didn't have to wait so long to see if what I was writing came out right or not.
Step Back
I don't know why stenography has to be such a two steps forward, one step back kind of deal. Every time I think I'm getting somewhere, there's a setback. I felt like I was making real progress with my realtime. I was becoming more aware of what I wrote as I was writing it. FREX, I wrote "BLOGD," and it didn't tran, so I wrote BLOG/D, easy as pie, during realtime. I felt like I was understanding better, as I wrote, why things weren't translating them, and I was getting better at fixing them without getting tripped up.
I had the opportunity to go sit in with a captioner, and she reviewed a half-hour file I did of the local news. She pointed out something that I saw when I was looking over the file myself. Since I learned to start dashing for corrections, and not counting it as an error if I dashed, I would often write things like "An air ryaner crashed in Baltimore today -- liner. Five people were killed." And I wouldn't count it as an error. But in reading that particular file, I realized that doesn't really help. It's completely out of context, and I should count it as an error.
She also said I needed to pick my speed up just a bit, and not drop quite as many sentences. I can agree with that. But when I try to force myself to go fast, I just get nervous and I make tons of mistakes, that I then try to fix, and then I'm even more behind, and it's a huge mess. I haven't ever been able to force myself to go faster that way.
I spent about a week trying to do it anyway, combined with trying to write (or re-write) more words around my corrections to give them context. I also practiced letting errors go more without trying to fix them, if I wasn't going to have time to give them context, or if I was going to drop a lot trying to make the correction. My accuracy tanked. For about another week, I tried to go back to my old style - more "smart" writing and telling myself I only had to get the important stuff, even though I'd wind up getting most of it. It didn't work. I still felt nervous about it, and my accuracy still sucked.
I started having problems getting into the groove of writing. I felt like my hands would go fast, no problem, but they kept stroking the wrong things. I even started stacking things I'd never stacked before! Ugh. I finally had one good day yesterday. I barely dropped anything at all, and nothing that was important. I had context around all of my corrections. My accuracy was 98.79%.
I'm not going to be able to find out if that particular streak would continue, because for the next two weeks I'm going to switch to metered verbatim practice for the CBC/CCP. Which we have to bring a printer for. Kind of silly, I think. I wonder if anyone ever gets together and says, "You bring the printer, and we'll all use it, and give you a few bucks for your trouble?"
I'm still forging on ahead, but I feel like I'm right back to square one again, feeling like I haven't made any progress in who knows how long. It's got to be there, though. Someone used to tell me, "When you used to be able to do something, and you can't anymore, that's just your body changing and evolving. It means you'll be able to do it soon again, better than before." It's a nice thing to pretend is true, whether it is or not.
I had the opportunity to go sit in with a captioner, and she reviewed a half-hour file I did of the local news. She pointed out something that I saw when I was looking over the file myself. Since I learned to start dashing for corrections, and not counting it as an error if I dashed, I would often write things like "An air ryaner crashed in Baltimore today -- liner. Five people were killed." And I wouldn't count it as an error. But in reading that particular file, I realized that doesn't really help. It's completely out of context, and I should count it as an error.
She also said I needed to pick my speed up just a bit, and not drop quite as many sentences. I can agree with that. But when I try to force myself to go fast, I just get nervous and I make tons of mistakes, that I then try to fix, and then I'm even more behind, and it's a huge mess. I haven't ever been able to force myself to go faster that way.
I spent about a week trying to do it anyway, combined with trying to write (or re-write) more words around my corrections to give them context. I also practiced letting errors go more without trying to fix them, if I wasn't going to have time to give them context, or if I was going to drop a lot trying to make the correction. My accuracy tanked. For about another week, I tried to go back to my old style - more "smart" writing and telling myself I only had to get the important stuff, even though I'd wind up getting most of it. It didn't work. I still felt nervous about it, and my accuracy still sucked.
I started having problems getting into the groove of writing. I felt like my hands would go fast, no problem, but they kept stroking the wrong things. I even started stacking things I'd never stacked before! Ugh. I finally had one good day yesterday. I barely dropped anything at all, and nothing that was important. I had context around all of my corrections. My accuracy was 98.79%.
I'm not going to be able to find out if that particular streak would continue, because for the next two weeks I'm going to switch to metered verbatim practice for the CBC/CCP. Which we have to bring a printer for. Kind of silly, I think. I wonder if anyone ever gets together and says, "You bring the printer, and we'll all use it, and give you a few bucks for your trouble?"
I'm still forging on ahead, but I feel like I'm right back to square one again, feeling like I haven't made any progress in who knows how long. It's got to be there, though. Someone used to tell me, "When you used to be able to do something, and you can't anymore, that's just your body changing and evolving. It means you'll be able to do it soon again, better than before." It's a nice thing to pretend is true, whether it is or not.
Headway
I'm finally starting to feel good about my realtime. Out of the last three news broadcasts I've practiced, my lowest accuracy was 98.83%. I'm starting to not get freaked out when I make a mistake, and be aware of what's being said while I fix mistakes. I still haven't gotten any work from the company I signed a contract with, though. I'd really like to get my feet wet and see where I stand on some actual CART work.
I'm feeling so confident that I even sent out "applications" to five CART/captioning companies, but I haven't heard anything back. It's frustrating because I've been working so long to be "ready," and now that I've put myself out there, no one seems interested in taking me on.
I'm intimidated by the captioning aspect, too. I live in an apartment, and we don't have a single landline, let alone the three or four I might need for captioning. We only have basic cable, and if I started captioning the traditional way, I'd have to buy a TV, modem, coupler, and amplifier, at least, plus AccuCap, which would be $3k alone. I have enough saved up for all of those things, but I'd much rather not have to get them.
In less stressful news, I finally hit an average of 180 wpm on all of my speed drills! I've been gunning for that goal for a while. I'm also doing a lot better making my corrections make sense when I practice realtime; making sure I have a dash before and after the correction word, if it doesn't come right after the error. I was having a problem with dashing before and using a comma after, but that's only happening rarely now.
I finally finished all my -NAIR corrections, and I've moved on to -ia, which I now write as KWRA*. Nothing in that group of 744 words seems to be defined the way I write it now, so that's my next project.
I made some changes to auto-brief; namely, I learned that you can tell it not to suggest certain letter combinations, which is really helpful. I don't ever write -TD or -SZ (or at least, not on purpose), and now I won't get suggestions with them. I also noticed sometimes it would suggest a brief with -TZ in it, which was just crazy (for me, anyway). For some reason after I did that, I lost my pop-up window. It was really weird, and I couldn't figure out how to get it back, until a few days later, it magically reappeared on its own!
I'm feeling so confident that I even sent out "applications" to five CART/captioning companies, but I haven't heard anything back. It's frustrating because I've been working so long to be "ready," and now that I've put myself out there, no one seems interested in taking me on.
I'm intimidated by the captioning aspect, too. I live in an apartment, and we don't have a single landline, let alone the three or four I might need for captioning. We only have basic cable, and if I started captioning the traditional way, I'd have to buy a TV, modem, coupler, and amplifier, at least, plus AccuCap, which would be $3k alone. I have enough saved up for all of those things, but I'd much rather not have to get them.
In less stressful news, I finally hit an average of 180 wpm on all of my speed drills! I've been gunning for that goal for a while. I'm also doing a lot better making my corrections make sense when I practice realtime; making sure I have a dash before and after the correction word, if it doesn't come right after the error. I was having a problem with dashing before and using a comma after, but that's only happening rarely now.
I finally finished all my -NAIR corrections, and I've moved on to -ia, which I now write as KWRA*. Nothing in that group of 744 words seems to be defined the way I write it now, so that's my next project.
I made some changes to auto-brief; namely, I learned that you can tell it not to suggest certain letter combinations, which is really helpful. I don't ever write -TD or -SZ (or at least, not on purpose), and now I won't get suggestions with them. I also noticed sometimes it would suggest a brief with -TZ in it, which was just crazy (for me, anyway). For some reason after I did that, I lost my pop-up window. It was really weird, and I couldn't figure out how to get it back, until a few days later, it magically reappeared on its own!
3.16.13
I started using the plastic case my LS came in as a lapdesk for the LS when I write, which is awesome. It's great not having to take anything extra to balance it on. I still haven't quite gotten my sitting position down perfectly. I feel like I have to write at speed for about 10 minutes before I can get into the groove, no matter how much other practice I do beforehand.
I've got a new system for my "reinforcement" practice. 50 words, and about 20-30 sentences. I was working on writing fractions properly - "two-thirds" in general, 2.5 million, 2 1/2 bars, etc. I'd been always doing "2.5" because I got a little mixed up when I read the style guidelines once, so that was totally natural. It didn't take too long to get used to "two-thirds"-style, and then I started working on things like 2 1/2. Now that's my default, and I have to focus really hard on using the other two when it's appropriate. My system for writing the latter is to just do 2/*1/*2, which seems to be working so far.
I've still got some sentences I'm practicing with that. I'll be practicing "an" sentences forever. I am slowly starting to remember to write A*N during realtime practice, though. Right now I'm also working on "-nent" sentences; pertinent, imminent, etc. I have a tendency to write the ending as -NT, which is my "n't." I could (and do) define the words that way, but I feel like it's better to write them properly, which would be NENT.
I ran into a major roadblock in my project of re-defining groups of words. I had a few that just related to the way I started writing ending word parts a long time ago, to help with writing names on the fly. It's not really intended for use in words that aren't proper nouns, but now that I've learned to use it with proper nouns, I tend to use it with everything. So I went back and fixed 360 instances of consonant +-ie (+ AO*IP), 515 of + ey (+ AO*EP), and 392 of -ee (AO*EP).
Then I ran into "-ive." I had 1544 "-ive" entries in my dictionary. The problem is, at best, I've got three ways to write those words. Take "combatative." I could write it COM/BAT/TIVE, COM/BAT/IVE, or COM/BA*FT. None of those are incorrect. For every word that's in there, I wind up writing it 3-6 different ways, and it's only actually in my dictionary one or two of those ways. Terrible. So I've been working on those for a while, and the other issues I've identified are piling up like mad. But I think I'm getting close to the end on those, finally.
I'm starting to regularly hit 250 wpm when I do realtime practice, which is awesome. I'm getting a pretty good feel for when/how to fix something, and when to let it go. Just not freaking out/freezing up when I make a mistake is a huge factor, and something I'm working on. I think my two biggest hurdles are still fingerspelling names, and not getting tripped up. I still have instances where I focus so much on one thing that's not working, that I lose what they're saying for about a sentence.
I've got a new system for my "reinforcement" practice. 50 words, and about 20-30 sentences. I was working on writing fractions properly - "two-thirds" in general, 2.5 million, 2 1/2 bars, etc. I'd been always doing "2.5" because I got a little mixed up when I read the style guidelines once, so that was totally natural. It didn't take too long to get used to "two-thirds"-style, and then I started working on things like 2 1/2. Now that's my default, and I have to focus really hard on using the other two when it's appropriate. My system for writing the latter is to just do 2/*1/*2, which seems to be working so far.
I've still got some sentences I'm practicing with that. I'll be practicing "an" sentences forever. I am slowly starting to remember to write A*N during realtime practice, though. Right now I'm also working on "-nent" sentences; pertinent, imminent, etc. I have a tendency to write the ending as -NT, which is my "n't." I could (and do) define the words that way, but I feel like it's better to write them properly, which would be NENT.
I ran into a major roadblock in my project of re-defining groups of words. I had a few that just related to the way I started writing ending word parts a long time ago, to help with writing names on the fly. It's not really intended for use in words that aren't proper nouns, but now that I've learned to use it with proper nouns, I tend to use it with everything. So I went back and fixed 360 instances of consonant +-ie (+ AO*IP), 515 of + ey (+ AO*EP), and 392 of -ee (AO*EP).
Then I ran into "-ive." I had 1544 "-ive" entries in my dictionary. The problem is, at best, I've got three ways to write those words. Take "combatative." I could write it COM/BAT/TIVE, COM/BAT/IVE, or COM/BA*FT. None of those are incorrect. For every word that's in there, I wind up writing it 3-6 different ways, and it's only actually in my dictionary one or two of those ways. Terrible. So I've been working on those for a while, and the other issues I've identified are piling up like mad. But I think I'm getting close to the end on those, finally.
I'm starting to regularly hit 250 wpm when I do realtime practice, which is awesome. I'm getting a pretty good feel for when/how to fix something, and when to let it go. Just not freaking out/freezing up when I make a mistake is a huge factor, and something I'm working on. I think my two biggest hurdles are still fingerspelling names, and not getting tripped up. I still have instances where I focus so much on one thing that's not working, that I lose what they're saying for about a sentence.
Breaking the Habit
I'm going to try to stop avoiding
updating this blog, and to post things when they come to me, rather than
saving them up for so long that I have to divide them into 5 different
posts.
I've been trying to get into the habit of dashing instead of "backspacing" with the asterisk. It's definitely a lot cleaner. I "talk" to myself a lot when I do my steno practice. I write what I'm "saying." If I made a mistake, I would often write "or [correction], rather." Instead of doing that, I've been training myself to dash and re-write the phrase.
That didn't really come in handy when I did my practice for the CBC exam. It doesn't do any good to dash on the exam. In fact, it's actually detrimental. If you do that, you're just giving yourself more of a chance to mess up on the "correction," and you're going to lose points for the incorrect words whether they're followed by a dash or not. It really just gets you farther behind for no reason.
So on the exam, if you have time to delete something, great - if not, you're better off just moving on than dashing and trying to clear it up for a potential reader.
It's kind of bothersome how I was originally training to do verbatim, not looking at the screen, and in order to do CART/captioning, I have to switch out of that mindset - but then to test, I have to switch back into it. Break a habit, intentionally re-form it, break it again..
I've been trying to get into the habit of dashing instead of "backspacing" with the asterisk. It's definitely a lot cleaner. I "talk" to myself a lot when I do my steno practice. I write what I'm "saying." If I made a mistake, I would often write "or [correction], rather." Instead of doing that, I've been training myself to dash and re-write the phrase.
That didn't really come in handy when I did my practice for the CBC exam. It doesn't do any good to dash on the exam. In fact, it's actually detrimental. If you do that, you're just giving yourself more of a chance to mess up on the "correction," and you're going to lose points for the incorrect words whether they're followed by a dash or not. It really just gets you farther behind for no reason.
So on the exam, if you have time to delete something, great - if not, you're better off just moving on than dashing and trying to clear it up for a potential reader.
It's kind of bothersome how I was originally training to do verbatim, not looking at the screen, and in order to do CART/captioning, I have to switch out of that mindset - but then to test, I have to switch back into it. Break a habit, intentionally re-form it, break it again..
StenEd: Y U No Be Conflict-Free?
I've hit a major roadblock in my speedbuilding, and it's really starting to become aggravating. I haven't made any progress in a whole year. I'm supposed to have been "graduated" by now! Ugh. All I can do is keep plugging away at it, I guess. I don't know what the big problem is with this 2-minute section, though. It's really starting to lose all meaning at this point.
I did finally accomplish something, though: I made it through the list of conflict-finding sentences! At first I was just going through it and if the sentence didn't produce a conflict, I moved on. But sometimes that was just because of a particular brief I had. So I took a closer look at what the sentence was trying to show me (that you shouldn't have the same outline for PER-, -PER and PER, for example) and made sure I wouldn't have any conflicts in any situation, not just the one presented by the sentence.
I discovered a lot of flaws in my own personal theory, and in StenEd, the above example being one of them. At the end of the exercise, I had a problem with: -con, -ran, -less, -fin, -den, -mine, -lean, -net, -lent, -rise, -set, -let, -size, -sit, -stance, -ate, -wait, -pal, -lay, -nut, -plain, -lies, -man, -jer, -win, est-, -til, -mit, Ron-, and -ster. A lot of them are easy fixes, like adding an asterisk to the word part and leaving the actual words as they are, and I didn't have to change a huge amount of entries. However, there were some word parts that took more work. They were, with number of entries I had to fix: -tic/tic/tick (200), -cal/cal/-cal (345), ter/-ter (277), -rate (113), -ton (115), and -ship (92).
Tick/tic/-tic was particularly problematic. TIK for tick, obviously, and T*IK for tic, but I couldn't do T-K for -tic because that's my "it can." So I went with T*K. The real problem is going to be remembering my resolutions for all of this stuff. Why couldn't StenEd have just actually been a conflict-free realtime theory, instead of being one "most of the time"?
With all the stuff I had to fix, I was beginning to think I should've just left the asterisks in all of my ending word parts, because now I have to try to remember which ones have asterisks and which ones don't. I tried to delete the vowels or do something other than just add an asterisk to make it easier to remember. Hopefully the number of ones I wound up just doing asterisks for is going to be small enough that I can learn them without inducing massive amounts of hesitation.
I also spent about half an hour going through all of my capitalized entries and forcing literal case on names like "De Niro." I already had most of them done, but I wanted to make sure I hadn't missed any and it would all be consistent.
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