The Shortest Path to Short Writing: Mark Kislingbury’s “Beginning Theory” by Lee Bursten, RMR, CRR

Over the past several years there has been renewed interest among court reporters in shortening their writing.  The idea of increasing one’s usage of word and phrase briefs was controversial for much of the past few decades, in an atmosphere where reporting schools de-emphasized briefs.  Much of the recent shift towards shortening is inspired by Mark Kislingbury, whose short writing was a big factor in his multiple speed and realtime contest victories and his still-undefeated Guinness World Record at 360 words per minute.

The initial goal of shortening one’s writing is to achieve an average of one stroke per word (in other words, the ability to write 100 words in 100 strokes).  With daily practice — even just ten minutes a day — this goal is quite achievable, even if your theory is one of those write-it-out ones that have you writing at 130 or more strokes per hundred words.

If you manage to reach one stroke per word, you can be justifiably proud — but no need to stop there!  Continued practice can easily bring you down to .9 or .8 strokes per word (90 or 80 strokes per 100 words).  If you’re wondering how you can write a word in less than one stroke, the answer is:  phrase briefs!  Writing many common two-, three-, or even four-word phrases in a single stroke will enable you to bring down your average strokes per word to less than one.  If you bring yourself down from 130 strokes per hundred words to 90, that means you’re writing 30% fewer strokes for the same number of words.

Imagine how much less physical stress, how much more speed, and how much more accuracy you can attain if you could write the same words with 30% fewer strokes.

Do you have to be a genius to realize such gains?  I can tell you from personal experience that the answer is NO!  I consider myself reasonably talented, but not one of those one-in-a-thousand reporters of superhuman ability; and after about three years of shortening, I’m now writing consistently at between .8 and .9 strokes per word.  It doesn’t take immense talent or immense effort.  It does take commitment, though. “Practicing briefs every day” means really practicing pretty much every day, and you do have to put some thought into what briefing strokes will work the best for you and fit most efficiently into your current theory.  But after a while, the everyday practice becomes a habit that you find yourself looking forward to, and the theory-tinkering becomes an enjoyable puzzle to keep the brain sharp.

Mark made the shortening process substantially easier when he published his book “Magnum Steno” in 2008, a huge compendium of all his short writing techniques, with long lists of English and steno for each concept.  Many reporters have used that book to help them in their shortening.  The only problem with that book was that the concepts weren’t presented in order of frequency, so that the reader had to try to figure out on their own which concepts to work with and in what order.

Mark’s new book, “Magnum Steno: Beginning Theory,” is the answer many of us have been waiting for.  Many working reporters will reasonably ask, “Why should I be interested in a beginning theory book?”  The answer is simple:  Word and phrase briefs are such an important part of Mark’s theory that he’s included briefing concepts in every single chapter, and he presents them in order of frequency, i.e. how likely they are to come up in everyday testimony (or, for captioners, everyday speech).  So the first several chapters present the most frequently-occuring briefs and phrases (like “is the,” “and a,” “approximately,” “company”), gradually moving to less frequently-occuring ones, until at the final chapters we have the least-likely-to-occur ones.

I can’t even begin to describe how valuable this is to a working reporter who wants to shorten their writing.  All the guesswork has been taken out of the equation.  All you have to do is open the book to Chapter 1, find the “Phrases” and “Briefs” sections of that chapter, and start briefing those words/phrases that you currently write in more than one stroke.  Repeat 95 times, which will bring you to the final chapter (Chapter 96), and you will be a very short writer.

The great thing about this approach is that the benefits are front-loaded, because you’re working on the most common words and phrases first.  That means that even if you only do the first quarter of the book and then stop, you’ll still have made a dramatic improvement in your writing.  If you’re like me, though, you’ll find that once you start to experience the benefits of shortening your writing, you’ll find it’s not so easy to stop!

Even those who have been working for years on shortening their writing will find much of value in this book.  For those folks, I’d still advise starting at Chapter 1 and start ferreting out words and phrases which you may not now be writing in one stroke.  Also, Mark has included many new word-and-phrase-brief concepts beyond what he taught in the original “Magnum Steno” book.

Mark supplies steno outlines for the briefs, but of course everyone will need to adapt the steno to what makes sense for them.  I try to use Mark’s outlines when I can, but sometimes I’ve had to change them to avoid conflicts with my own theory.  I’ve learned, though, that sometimes Mark’s outline makes more sense even if it means I have to change how I write something else, because many of Mark’s outlines follow a consistent logic which makes them much easier to remember.

One word of advice for those who come to this book without having seen any of Mark’s previous teaching materials:  Some of Mark’s briefs, particularly phrase briefs, are very key-intensive; in other words, a single stroke may have a lot of keys in it, which looks very scary on the page.  When I first got the “Magnum Steno” book years ago, this alone kept me from beginning serious work on the book for months.  Eventually I realized that those strokes really aren’t scary at all.  When you write them, you don’t have to think about every separate letter that’s in the stroke; rather, it’s the shapes of the strokes and the groupings of keys that are important, in the same way that we write the final -J sound without thinking about the fact that it’s made up of the P, B, L, and G keys.

You’ll want to keep a list of the briefs you’re working on.  It’s important to spend some time every day going over not just the briefs that you’re learning currently, but also your complete list of briefs you’ve learned thus far.  Of course you don’t have to write every single brief from the complete list at each practice session, but rather a random portion of it.  So, for example, if you use flashcards with all your briefs written on them, you’ll want to shuffle the cards and then write the first fifty or hundred or so, whatever you can fit into your five-, ten-, or 15-minute daily practice.

You could also use online flashcard sites, or a text document or Excel spreadsheet that allows you to randomize the list.  These days I practice from four separate lists:  My list of briefs I’m currently learning; the list of briefs that I was previously learning; the complete list of briefs I’ve learned so far; and a short list of briefs from the complete list which I find myself having difficulty remembering.

I’ve seen some reporters commenting online about how they don’t use many briefs because they find they “don’t stick.”  My belief is that these reporters aren’t any less able to memorize briefs than anyone else – they just haven’t practiced them enough.  You need to practice a brief you’re working on every day, for months if necessary, until it sinks in thoroughly, and even then you need to write the brief every once in awhile – thus the random practice from the complete list – in order to maintain your hold over it.

If you become a member of Mark’s Magnum Steno Club, you can receive from him a pre-made Excel spreadsheet file where you can simply type in the English for all your briefs, then hit a single key to randomize them.

I do still find the original “Magnum Steno” book useful because the older book has long lists of examples using each concept, whereas the new book only has a limited number of examples.  As a realtime writer, I like to input the long lists from the older book, so I can be sure a particular phrase combination will translate the first time I write it.  Or you can accomplish the same thing by merging Mark’s dictionary (available for purchase from his site or for free to Magnum Steno and Beginning Theory book purchasers) with your own, making necessary changes to avoid conflicts with your theory.

The “Beginning Theory” book also has plenty of other material of interest to working reporters, such as Mark’s method of writing all 20th and 21st century years in one stroke, times of day, ordinals, specialized terminology, and more. The regular price is $249, plus $14.95 for shipping and handling.  For students and Magnum Steno Club members, there’s a $50 discount code that can be obtained by writing Mark at mark@magnumsteno.com.  For those who own the original “Magnum Steno” book, if you look at the very last page and send Mark your book number that’s handwritten on that page, for the month of September 2014 you can get a $100 discount with a code Mark will give you.

Trust me, as long as you practice diligently, you will find, as I did, that it’s the best money you ever spent.

Finally, I’m not affiliated with Mark — just a very satisfied customer.

Lee Bursten, RMR, CRR, has been reporting for 26 years, working as a freelance deposition reporter for agencies in New York and Washington, DC.  He spent four years at the U.S. Congress as an Official Reporter to House Committees, and spent nine years working as a full-time captioner before returning to freelance reporting in 2009.  He holds the Registered Professional Reporter, the Certified Realtime Reporter, and the Registered Merit Reporter certifications.