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Welcome to the Steno Wizard's Realtime Journey!






Remember when life was simple and all you had to do was make a selection on what your steno really meant? Those days are long gone.





Reporters must get themselves into top realtime form to compete in today's job market. This is my contribution toward ALL of us reaching the realtime goal.



My Steno Wizardry concept is based on the idea that writing realtime actually doesn't require magic -- just hard work, determination, and a little bit of FUN imagination.



My hope is my sharing of the ideas I've incorporated into my realtime journey will assist you in yours.



Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The Steno Keyboard Shift Key



Steno Wizard uses this idea to distinguish proper names from their soundalikes and stenonyms.
Examples such as Bill/bill, Tammy/team, Mark/mark, Todd/-ed to/today, Phil/fill.  More examples to come.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Resolving barb, garb, carb stenonyms


Steno Wizard has to use a memory trick to resolve these stenonyms.  Bash and barb from theory days were stroked the same -- PWARB -- as well as gash and garb --TKPWARB.  By creating a mental picture of the resolution, inserting a U in the word with the RB that means RB and not SH, Steno Wizard has been able to stroke these consistently for realtime.

Steno Wizard visualized barb as soldiers crawling Under barbed wire, so it was easy to remember to insert the U in the stroke.  Now, Barb, the shortened nickname for Barbara, gets the asterisk because Steno Wizard has made it a theory principle to insert asterisks for proper names that need resolution.

Steno Wizard visualized garb as Undies, and so the U is inserted into the stroke for garb TKPWAURB.

For the cash/cache/carb problem, cash is still stroked KARB.  Cache is stroked as it's spelled KAERB (kind of).  Carb gets the U based on the theory that barb and garb get U's inserted into them too.  Of course, we could think of the word carburetor and the U that's in the middle of that word if it helps.