March Madness Puts Court Reporting To The Test

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Can a California court reporter take on an NCAA athlete? The Wisconsin Badgers seem to think so. “Cattywampus, onomatopoeia, and antidisestablishmentarianism” are three of the most convoluted words spoken so far during NCAA March Madness. They came from Wisconsin Badgers player Nigel Hayes, in an attempt to test the interview transcriber’s skills. At Capital Reporting Company, we know that any court reporter worth her salt can transcribe them, as occurred during the NCAA press conference. The interview stenographer, known on Twitter as @Saintsswimmom, transcribed the sesquipedalian words without missing a beat, amazing the college basketball team and their coach. Our court reporters in San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington DC, accomplish similar feats every day, transcribing over 225 words per minute with expert skill and cutting edge technology.

How do court reporters type words that many of us have never even heard before? By relying on our hearing rather than spelling memorization. As was demonstrated to the Wisconsin Badgers that night, a stenographer uses a special machine called a stenotype, which transcribes words according to phonemes (sounds) rather than letters. For example, there are three phonemes in the word “apple,” A-P-L. A qualified stenographer, like our San Francisco court reporters, can transcribe these three sounds by simultaneously pressing a combination of keys. When employed by a trained professional, this process is much faster than individually typing the five letters “a-p-p-l-e”. The same procedure goes for even longer, stranger words such as “antidisestablishmentarianism.”

Each court reporter has a personal dictionary on his or her computer, which gleans new and frequently used words from each transcript. This allows the reporter to save and retrieve the terms, transcribing them faster each time they are repeated. This is particularly helpful in depositions that contain expert witness testimony, where a witness may use medical jargon or other unusual phrases. A court reporter must be ready to transcribe this terminology, so that your deposition can run smoothly, and testimony can be accurately taken, without interruption.

Nigel Hayes and his teammates were very impressed with the court reporter’s level of skill and technique. When asked why he opened his interview with such strange words, Hayes responded, “Well, the wonderful lady over there, I think her title is stenographer, yes, OK. And she does an amazing job of typing words. Sometimes if words are not in her dictionary, maybe if I say ‘soliloquy’ right now, she may have to work a little harder to type the word, or ‘quandary’, or ‘zephyr’, ‘xylophone’, things like that, that make her job really interesting.” (You can watch Hayes and his teammates testing out the stenotype on Twitter.)

For the record, the word “cattywampus” is an adjective or adverb meaning “askew” or “awry.” For example, “If you don’t want your deposition to go cattywampus, schedule a court reporter from the leading court reporting services provider.” Since 2012, Capital has been consistently voted among the Best Overall Providers of Court Reporting and Deposition Services in the National Law Journal/ Legal Times. Call us today to schedule your deposition. We will meet your March Madness challenge with dedicated service.

What Is A Verbatim Transcript?

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Our court reporting company is proud to offer many different kinds of transcription and deposition services, among them are verbatim transcripts. What is a verbatim transcript? You probably know the word, verbatim, and its meaning “word for word.” And if you guess that a verbatim transcript means that each and every word is transcribed, you would be right. Did you know, however, that there are different kinds of verbatim transcripts?: Intelligent Verbatim, which is word for word, and True Verbatim, which is, essentially, sound for sound.

True Verbatim

Imagine an interviewer asking a witness, “Were you aware, of the defendant’s whereabouts on the night in question?” The witness hesitates, perhaps stutters or laughs nervously before answering, “Ummm…no. Not at the time.” An intelligent verbatim transcript (which we will discuss below), may simply read “No. Not at the time.” A straightforward answer, but a true verbatim transcription will capture every sound and nuance in the witness’s answer. This includes fillers, pauses, and ambient noise. It will read something like the following:

Interviewer: Were you aware of the defendant’s whereabouts on the night in question?

Interviewee: [Silence] um…no. [Pause]…not at the time.

A true verbatim transcript can be essential in assessing a witness’s credibility, as those hesitations, spelled out on the page, may indicate a witness’s lying or uncertainty, and determine how the litigants move forward. True verbatim transcriptions may be most useful in situations where the way in which something is said is equally important to what is said. Such transcripts are necessary in commercial cases, intellectual property cases, and even car accident cases.

Intelligent Verbatim

There are other instances, of course, where ambient noises, filler words and nonverbal sounds can be distracting. In this case, our court reporters and transcriptionists are happy to provide Intelligent verbatim, or simply verbatim, transcripts.This is an excellent practice for bloggers, journalists, and others who may need an exact quote but do not need the superfluous, minute details. Intelligent verbatim, or simply verbatim transcription, is helpful when you need a clean quote for a succinct story or report.

Whichever form of transcription you choose, Capital Reporting Company is proud to offer a host of court reporting services. We are a comprehensive court reporting and deposition company, proud to serve you locally, nationally, and internationally. Whatever your transcription needs, entrust your verbatim and true verbatim transcripts to Capital Reporting Company. Schedule a deposition or other service with us today.