March Madness Puts Court Reporting To The Test
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.
