The
Voice Writing Method of Court
Reporting
Understanding Court Reporting
Court reporters, whether stenotype or voice writers, experience and
execute four basic steps to produce a transcript.
1.) A speaker speaks, sending sound waves into the air.
2.) The reporter must determine what words were actually represented by
the incoming sound waves. This step includes many sub-processes,
such as knowing what part of the country the speaker is from, filtering
out background waves from a passing airplane, rustling paper, etc.,
analysis to determine the most likely word spoken against a wide range
of simultaneous contexts including the witness' educational background,
the reporter's own educational background, the deposition's general
subject matter, the context of the individual question & answer, et
al.
3.) After deciding what words were heard, the reporters must physically
reproduce them by transmitting them into a magnetic media file and/or
onto court reporting paper.
4.) The reporter then produces a transcript of the speaker's words
using the magnetic media file or the court reporting paper.