Mark Kislingbury's Book and Teaching Oneself Steno

[Joshua Taylor]

I am going to learn steno and over the past 6 months I've been digging
up all the information I can find about it. But there's a lot of it,
it's very spread out, and it's not always clear what is reliable and
what is not. While I'm not planning to use steno as a job, I want to
learn it and I figure that if I'm going to learn it, I may as well do it
right and give it my all. I'm planning to devote time to it for the
following semester as if it were a 3 credit hour class at my college. (9
hours of practice/study per week) I don't plan to stop practicing after
that, but I'll make a new plan when the spring semester nears its end.
Since I enjoy trying to get better at something (why do you think I
became interested in steno instead of wasting my time getting a measly
20 or 30 more wpm tacked onto my 75 wpm qwerty when that was going to be
an upper limit anyway?), I want to learn to steno as quickly and
accurately as I can. I don't know how fast or how accurate that is, but
I won't know if I never try. In my digging, I came across a book by Mark
Kislingbury which appears to be the optimal theory, but it took me long
enough to discover ad-block that I'm a tiny bit skeptical of that. Hence
this post.

Unfortunately, the only info I can find about Mark Kislingbury's book
"Magnum Steno: Beginning Theory" is from Kislingbury's website and his
videos. His argument for "writing short" as he calls it, is elementary
math. I like that argument: Math never lies. Statistics, however, can,
even when they're technically accurate. So I'm wondering, has anyone
tried or known anyone who tried to learn Kislingbury's theory? Is he
selling snake oil or is writing short the way to go if one is willing to
put forth the effort?

If I do buy Kislingbury's book, then my current plan would be to start
out learning steno through "Learn Plover", but skip over briefs and
concentrate on really learning the keyboard and stroking words out
without briefs. Then, once I'm comfortable with that and ready to learn
briefs, switch dictionaries from the default Plover one to one I (will
have, if I go this route) bought from Kislingbury and start really
working on the material in Kislingbury's book, but still working through
"Learn Plover" for everything except the briefs. Is this a workable
plan, assuming for the purposes of argument that Kislingbury's theory is
a good one?

Note: The above plan is based on my understanding that (A) the
Kislingbury book does not cover the basics of steno, so that's where
"Learn Plover" would come in for me, and (B) steno theories differ
mainly in how and to what extent they brief words, so I can expect the
transition from Plover to Magnum to be smooth since the main differences
between the theories will not yet have been learned by me in either.

Note: I will be learning on the SOFT/HRUF initially, but I plan to
switch to a proper steno machine at some point, probably mid to high
100s or when I conclude that the machine is really slowing me down and
it's just time to bite the bullet and shell out some cash, whichever
comes first.

Disclaimer: This is totally posted here because I'll be using Plover to
write and not because this is the only active steno related mailing list
in existence*.

Thank you for reading, understanding, comprehending, and replying to
this post, in ascending order of thanks due. I appreciate your
expenditure of time. Or, if you prefer, the opportunity cost of said time.

-- Joshua Taylor

PS I'm sure I forgot some questions about teaching oneself steno. Ah
well, I'll either think of them in time or learn about them when a face
plant into them. :)

* tvtropes.org/main/BlatantLies

[Glen Warner]

Hi, Joshua.

Mark's theory book is new ... but he's been around for quite a while now ... and before he came out with Magnum Steno, there was the StenoMaster theory, as well as an online school. You can see an archived version of the school's website here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060903050525/http://stenomaster.com

Unfortunately, most of the images somehow were not archived, so that makes for a strange-looking website.

The school closed down because of a disagreement between Mark and his business partner, and they had a parting of the ways ... and the StenoMaster school became "Court Reps" (http://www.courtreps.com), with a theory very similar to the StenoMaster theory, which was renamed "Howie Wright" theory (get it? "How We Write" ...?).

I'm not sure what happened, but they vanished from the scene a couple years back, though the site seems to be there, just no content.

So. Somewhere in there, Mark gave an interview to Marc "Simply Steno" Greenberg in a three-way discussion about steno theories, which was a comparison between Phoenix, CRAH (that's "Court Reporting At Home"), and StenoMaster. You can read Mark's interview here:

http://www.stenolife.com/markk.htm

... and, if you're curious, you can find the other two here:

http://www.stenolife.com/lindab.htm (that's CRAH's author, Linda Bland)

http://www.stenolife.com/carolj.htm (that's Phoenix's author, Carol Jochim)

Somewhere in there, Mark managed to break the world record for steno, by writing at 360 words per minute for, I believe it was one minute (it's been a while).

Since then, he re-worked his theory quite a bit and changed the name to "Magnum Steno," and he's started another school, this time in Texas, called the "Mark Kislingbury Academy of Court Reporting" (http://www.mkcourtreporting.com) ... and recently graduated his first student -- after one year and five months! You can read about how that student managed to do that here:

http://www.cheapandsleazy.net/melody.html

... so yes, Mark is the real deal.

But.

Mark is big on writing as fast as you can to build speed, but there are a few folks out there -- most notably Steve Shastay from Court Reporting Help.com -- who disagree with that method:

"Bad advice: 'Write as fast as you can. Your strokes will clear up later.'

"Good golly, this is bad advice. If you are always stroking at your top speed, you will tire and make mistakes. No one, in any field, can perform at their top speed for long.  

"Best advice: stroke as fast as you can competently stroke; always maintain your clarity."   

I'm pretty sure there's a happy medium between the two schools of thought, though ...

As for your plan of attack, it sounds good -- except for the part where you're going to rely on Plover's built-in dictionary.

I don't think you should do that. You should load the .rtf version of the Magnum Steno dictionary into Plover as soon as you get it (you should be able to get a copy since you will be buying the book; just send Mark an e-mail and request it if the back doesn't come with it), and use that to learn with.

Sure, some of the briefs and phrases will be different, but hopefully there will be enough common phrases between the two theories that you won't notice anything weird.

Hopefully.

Well. Sorry about the length. I hope that sheds a little light ...

[dragon788]

Keeping in mind that I have no steno experience whatsoever but I am approaching things just like you are, lots of research and looking for good theories that will help me become a much faster typist while not necessarily having the speed required for my job, it should help me with getting more things done.

I watched all of the videos of Mark and Melody and the one where she was maintaining 180wpm only a few months into her training was pretty awesome. Overall she graduated and was able to test at 280wpm and I'd guess she probably achieved it.

Her tips per that "sleazy" site and watching the interviews are to practice 3 times a day, even if they are 10-20 minute sessions, to practice your briefs and overall she suggests focusing less on the "Q&A" punctuation (used in court reporting) and not skipping any days of practice. This keeps things fresh in your brain, and she also was supportive of practicing at speed, as the constant practice makes things where you are trying to stroke out at full speed feel much more leisurely.

This advice is great: Mark is big on writing as fast as you can to build speed, but there are a few folks out there -- most notably Steve Shastay from Court Reporting Help.com -- who disagree with that method:

"Bad advice: 'Write as fast as you can. Your strokes will clear up later.'

"Good golly, this is bad advice. If you are always stroking at your top speed, you will tire and make mistakes. No one, in any field, can perform at their top speed for long.

"Best advice: stroke as fast as you can competently stroke; always maintain your clarity."

I'm pretty sure there's a happy medium between the two schools of thought, though ...

One thing I was reading recently elaborated on the happy medium. Classical musicians, professional music artists, and really anybody looking to get better at their craft typically practices their "moves" 3 ways. Go through the motions really fast (playing a song, shooting hoops, dribbling, etc) not worrying as much about accuracy as quickly performing the task so your muscles have a loose memory of the "right" way to do it, and a strong memory of the "fast" way to do it. Then go through the motions again slowly and deliberately, some even recommend using an online metronome to keep type, in this phase focus on making zero mistakes and knowing exactly where every finger needs to be. The third phase is to go through again at normal speed, but normal being a comfortable pace (when playing a song, playing at a speed you would sing along to it) and trying to maintain both accuracy and speed, which should be a bit easier since you've gotten practice with the speed and the accuracy side of things.

My goal as I also try to learn steno is going to be to take all these suggestions into account and hopefully train my brain to retain the briefs that I make up. Overall with the customizability of steno dictionaries, I don't see a lot of difference between the various theories except where they care more about longer strokes with more explicit words or making short strokes that might not exactly match any word but you map it to one and use it consistently to "write short".

[Joshua Taylor]

Thank you for the input and informative links.

-- Joshua Taylor

PS Just got home from WI and SOFT/HRUF was in the mail. Assembly may have to wait until Urueta (or someone else) posts his (their) build of it, but I've already played around with some simple words, having memorized steno order a few weeks ago.

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[Joshua Taylor]

Good advice, thanks for sharing. :)

-- Joshua Taylor

[Steven Tammen]

I too am going to start with the HRUF soon and want to do it the "right way" the first time. I would consider this a bump (certainly there have to be more people out there that have used this or known about it?), but I want to add what little I've learned.

Mark seems like a nice enough guy, but it still bothers me that everything is so expensive (college student problems...). I am strongly in favor of FOSS (ala GNU; Plover fits the bill!) and anything with paywalls in front of it always makes me inherently distrustful. On the other hand, lack of incentive breeds mediocrity, and people must eat too, after all. Most of all, I am turned off by marketing. I don't think magnum steno is dishonest or anything, but it is a bit heavy on the testimonials and sales-pitch type content. All theories right now lack rigorous comparison by having people sit down and learn them at the same time while measuring speed, ease of use, length (strokes/word), and so forth. Until something like this is done, if it ever is, we will have to choose between Phoenix, StenEd, Magnum Steno, etc. based on which one we find most attractive in theory (no pun intended).

On the plus side, this seems to be the theory that makes the most logical sense. If you stroke less, you go faster. Duh. But there will be a much higher memory load with this approach too, and if that's something that sounds intimidating, then it's best to think about what's realistic. My personal take on the matter is that if you can create conflict free briefs that resemble their target word (Mirabai's example of DPLORBL for deplorable comes to mind), then this is always a good thing. To the extend that you can get other one-strokers in muscle memory through sheer power of will, even better. But it is far better to have a few briefs that you remember and use than all the briefs in the world and no recollection of them.

I'd be happy to share my experience later if I do end up going this route. We should identify other newbies and get some sort of "learn steno together" group going. I, at least, always do stuff better if I'm doing with others.

[Mirabai Knight]

Yeah, my own totally unsubstantiated hunch is that the incredible speed and efficiency of Mark Kislingbury and ED Varallo is precisely because they both built their dictionaries and theories and all their briefs from scratch, so what they gained from the process is not necessarily transferable to someone who just learns the theories and memorizes the briefs.

[Charles Shattuck]

When I started I had no way to really decide what theory would work best for me, so I took the easy route and just trusted Mirabai. I'm not sorry I did.

[Steven Tammen]

At the same time, there are some briefs that are just objectively good, too, and theory is theory. I'd love to have the time to create my own dictionary from scratch and brief everything in a way that is entirely natural to me because I invented it. But I know that is not realistic for me, and, probably, for most people that aren't doing this full time.

IIRC you came from a StenEd background then kind of did your own thing, which turned into the main Plover dict. Do you know of anyone that has done Kislingbury's approach explicitly? I think the thing that makes the whole theory thing hard is that there aren't a whole lot of court reporters who go online and talk about it. It's all sort of hush-hush (at least in practice, if not intentionally), and there's no reason for that. For us newbies finding information without people trying to sell you stuff is pretty hard.

[Mirabai Knight]

Stan Sakai does mostly Magnum Steno, if I remember correctly.

[Gabriel Holmes]

I'd love to see steno taught in elementary schools along side "Reeling and Writhing ... and ... the different branches of arithmetic -- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision" Then children would start inventing theories the way only children can. That would put MK's theory to the test.

[Theodore Morin]

Stan is also based of Philly, which he uses to build his own strokes. that's another route.

[Steven Tammen]

What do you mean by "build his own strokes"? Is that the same as making briefs or does it mean something else?

[Theodore Morin]

Well, yes, but overall build his own dictionary using his rules which are based on similar ones to Philly and Magnum.

[Achim Siebert]

Me, too. I only bought the dictionary without the theory book. It only took a short time to make sense of it, just using some free material about Magnum Steno that I found on the net to get started (oops, I just stroke “shattered”, hopefully not a bad omen). Maybe I think in the same way as Mark or I adapted quickly to his ways of making briefs.  Often I can guess a one stroke brief by now. So I'm quite a happy camper with my decision. It really saves quite a lot of strokes.

[Steven Tammen]

What is this "free material about Magnum Steno that I found on the net"? I couldn't find much else other than his site, which might be a bit biased for obvious reasons.

[Achim Siebert]

I have a few PDFs which I found by googling. No idea where I found them, but here are the file names so you could do a search:

mark_kislingbury_presentation_acra_01-23-2015.pdf

Mark%20K.'s%20Illinois%20Handouts.pdf

Sat_0730_RHPE_Kislingbury.pdf

Best, Achim.

[Hanchul Park]

Thank you Achim, Kislingbury's idea in the presentation pdfs, separating left and right hand, seems particularly useful to me. In Korean, my native language, most of words are accompanied by a postfix. So I would place mostly used words for the left fingers and thumbs, and postfixes for the right fingers.

2016년 1월 24일 일요일 오전 1시 8분 22초 UTC+9, Achim Siebert 님의 말:

[dragon788]

Thanks Achim,

It appears the acra one has fallen off the web, but Google caches an HTML version.

The second it looks like the order of characters might be different, Illinois%20Mark%20K%20Handouts.pdf located it for me.

And the last worked great just googling it.

[C. Lands]

On Saturday, December 26, 2015 at 11:17:35 PM UTC-5, Joshua Taylor wrote:

[C. Lands]



27s

selfstudycourtreporting.com Did anyone hear of her?
she is the cheapest course based on mark's theory and I wondered if this is the right direction as I am looking to get into this but cannot pay 500 per month tuition that i saw on Mar;s site
I am looking to learn this from home and need either a program that offers financial aid based on mark's theory as I hear he is the best.
can anyone help me out? thank you so much

On Saturday, December 26, 2015 at 11:17:35 PM UTC-5, Joshua Taylor wrote:

[jessica caudron]

What is your goal? To learn steno as a hobby or to become a court reporter/captioner? To learn steno as a hobby, I would get Plover (free), a theory book that costs $249 in Mark's store if you were set on learning his theory, and a steno machine or one of the NKRO keyboards or options. I do prefer my Wave over my keyboard though.

I have not heard of Self Study Court Reporting before you posted that link, but I'm not actively looking for a court reporting at home self-study program so it's not a knock on the program. If you have the self-discipline to work through theory and speedbuilding on your own, you could buy most or all of those materials yourself.  It can be done and has been done by a few people. 

I think the value of the program you have referred to depends entirely on the usefulness of this unlimited email support. The website makes it clear they are not a school. 

[Glen Warner]

On Tuesday, September 5, 2017 at 11:41:53 AM UTC-7, C. Lands wrote:





selfstudycourtreporting.com Did anyone hear of her?
she is the cheapest course based on mark's theory and I wondered if this is the right direction as I am looking to get into this but cannot pay 500 per month tuition that i saw on Mar;s site
I am looking to learn this from home and need either a program that offers financial aid based on mark's theory as I hear he is the best.
can anyone help me out? thank you so much

Yes, I remember recommending to somebody that they could buy a copy of Mark's "StenoMaster Theory" book directly from her site, only to find that what she had told me in an e-mail was actually not the case.

Needless to say, the person I sent to her was *NOT* pleased.

--gdw    

[Ian Dawson]

Looks like a lot of money for what is essentially an outdated copy of Mark's theory (his latest theory book is Magnum Steno) and a few pamphlets. It says it's a self study program, so you're not going to get day to day support. There are plenty of facebook forums you could ask questions for free in place of "unlimited email support". 

A better option would be to buy the theory book and audios from Mark's site, teach yourself theory and then look into joining something like SimplySteno. That would be a smaller initial outlay. 

Does it have to be Mark's theory? Controversial option perhaps, but If you teach yourself then there are other theory materials that would be much easier to use - Phoenix or StenEd being the main ones.  

If you're a hobbyist rather than definitely looking to use steno professionally then look for the Plover Theory materials, or buy a second hand StenEd or Phoenix theory book.

Ian

--

[C. Lands]

Hi I am looking to become a court reporter and want to know the best online school or home study where I can achieve my goal.  Any ideas who I can contact as I cannot go to school because it too far away from me.

[C. Lands]

Thank you so much for your reply.  I really want to become a court reporter doing live captioning.

But I can only learn on my own as the schools are too far away.  What is the best thing that I can do to do this quick and learn the right theory?

Hope to hear back from you.

[C. Lands]

Can anyone help me?

To become a professional cart reporter and if I want to learn it on my own and have 4 hours a day to practive

What would be my best way to go about this?

which theory should I study and so forth?

hope to hear from anyone out there as I want to learn this and cannot go to school as its too far away from me.

[jessica caudron]

If you want to learn steno on your own, then get a steno machine, buy a theory book (I do recommend Magnum Steno's website to buy a theory book), and download Plover.  Plover also includes a theory, but you have mentioned you are interested in Magnum Steno.

Doing theory on your own requires a lot more initiative, but it also helps you figure out very fast if steno is for you before you spend thousands of dollars on an online school. 

If you want the structure of an online school, there are many different ones. Some include theory. Some are just for building speed and don't care about your theory because you are expected to have already learned it.

Without recommending any one of these, here is a partial list of online schools: Hardeman, SimplySteno, Stenotrain, El Paso Community College online, Mark Kislingbury online. SimplySteno does not teach theory but they are linked to another course that does.

Also as an aside, I strongly highly recommend doing finger drills. Glen Warner has Da Dreaded Dueling Digits buried on his page. I also have the S. Heller ones, but I prefer the DD's. 15 to 30 minutes a day until you can do any of them without hesitation.

[Robert Fontaine]

With regard to Magnum.  I have found myself wondering if such a heavily brief based theory isn't better tackled once an individual has master a more flexible stroke intensive theory as well as having developed the essential stenography skills?

Thanks for the finger drilling links I will add them to my weekly practice.

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[jessica caudron]

I think the key to any theory is eliminating your hesitation. If you learn the theory, then there's no hesitation when you hear the word. I don't worry about how much I have to memorize because I think that's a way to start worrying about the wrong things, like worrying how you could possibly hit 225 when you are barely doing 80, like a lot of students do, or being obsessed with how many thousands of entries you have in your dictionary. It's not important.

Short answer: No, I don't think it is better to learn another theory before Magnum/Stenomaster/whatever. It's a full theory, not just a bunch of briefs put together. I think learning another theory first is unnecessary. I learned a modified Sten-ed before I started switching to Magnum. 

[Robert Fontaine]

Hey Jessica,

Interesting... I would have thought that the path you took Stened followed by Magnum would be more productive.   It is nice to know that I was wrong.

On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 11:27 AM, jessica caudron <jessica...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think the key to any theory is eliminating your hesitation. If you learn the theory, then there's no hesitation when you hear the word. I don't worry about how much I have to memorize because I think that's a way to start worrying about the wrong things, like worrying how you could possibly hit 225 when you are barely doing 80, like a lot of students do, or being obsessed with how many thousands of entries you have in your dictionary. It's not important.

Short answer: No, I don't think it is better to learn another theory before Magnum/Stenomaster/whatever. It's a full theory, not just a bunch of briefs put together. I think learning another theory first is unnecessary. I learned a modified Sten-ed before I started switching to Magnum. 

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Thank you,

Robert Fontaine
204 293 6253

[Glen Warner]

On Thursday, September 14, 2017 at 9:58:21 AM UTC-7, Robert Fontaine wrote:

Hey Jessica,

Interesting... I would have thought that the path you took Stened followed by Magnum would be more productive.   It is nice to know that I was wrong.

Hi, Robert.

Up on Cheap and Sleazy is an article by a young woman that finished Mark's new B&M (say "Brick and Mortar") school in one year and seven months -- though if I recall correctly, she did go to a couple of other schools first, found them to be less than great, and ended up transferring to Mark's school.

She was nice enough to write up her practice regimen sometime back, and allowed me to host it on Cheap and Sleazy ... and you can read that one here:

http://www.cheapandsleazy.net/melody.html

Enjoy!

--gdw  

[Glen Warner]

Yes, you should stroke the asterisk key.

--gdw  

On Sun, Sep 17, 2017 at 8:57 AM, <dvora...@gmail.com> wrote:

When you practice the dreaded dueling digits do you write the *?  or just the letters?    

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[dvora...@gmail.com]

Thanks. The numbers too? 

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to ploversteno...@googlegroups.com.

[dvora...@gmail.com]

So I stroke the* key and the numbers?   

On Monday, September 18, 2017 at 2:02:02 AM UTC-4, Glen Warner wrote:

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to ploversteno...@googlegroups.com.

[Glen Warner]

On Monday, September 18, 2017 at 9:36:59 AM UTC-7, dvora...@gmail.com wrote:

Thanks. The numbers too?

Sorry ... not sure how I missed the bit about numbers!

No, don't write the numbers.

--gdw  

[jessica caudron]

I don't write the asterisk in these drills or any drills FYI but I don't think it's a bad thing, especially since I use the asterisk in a lot of briefs and phrases. I would probably do a set of drills with and without the asterisk like *EFD EFT or something like that.

[Susan Connelly]

Mark's program is for those who already have learned steno.  I would not recommend it for a beginner, and for your purposes it wouldn't

be necessary at all, in my opinion.  Unless you have the desire to be a 300 wpm speed demon.  

 

[jessica caudron]

I understood this question to be about the Mark K's steno theory (either the old Stenomaster or the current Beginning Theory), which is absolutely for someone who doesn't know steno. Magnum Steno (the tree book from 2008) is not laid out like a steno theory book and would be very difficult for a beginner to use.