BREVITY: Write Simply
Make the writing you use feel easier.
BREVITY · Steno designed around the writer
Hear the word.
Write the word.
Different theories offer distinct writing experiences.
Try BREVITYSeven outlines. A short passage. Your own experience.
▶ Listen to Tom’s welcome 1 minute
A welcome from Tom Fernicola, creator of BREVITY
About one minute · Read the introduction
Try one word at your machine
Same word. Same one stroke.
Fewer keys.
time
Magnum
TAOEUPL7 keysBREVITY
T-PL3 keysNotice the combination in your hands.
Then try it in a sentence.
One selected comparison. Key counts do not measure recall or overall writing difficulty. See all 100 words, including ties and Magnum’s advantages.
Find your way to write.
Learn steno, improve the writing you use, or explore the reasoning behind BREVITY.
BREVITY: The Theory
Learn steno from your first keys.
The Science of Steno
Explore the thinking behind the writing.
From a working reporter
Writing should feel good.
“I wanted to make my job easier to manage. What I didn't expect was how much fun writing could be when it got easier.”
Tom Fernicola · Working realtime reporter with 37 years of experience
Read what reporters and students are saying →Give practice a purpose.
Choose a comfortable pace. Write, read back, and check your notes. The Woodshedder lets you return to the material that needs more work.
Explore the Woodshedder →Look at the writing.
Explore the keys and combinations in paired outlines. Try the alternatives at your machine and decide what works for you.
Compare 100 words →Look at the evidence
What can you verify?
Explore the published outline analysis, school completion records, and sources behind BREVITY. A controlled study comparing student outcomes across theories is still needed.
Not sure where to start? Put one of your transcripts into the BREVITY Analyzer and see how many keys you could save. It's free.
Is any of this proven?
How do you respond to claims that BREVITY lacks independent validation or peer review?
By pointing to what's documented and naming what's still open.
The documented record is public. A Texas academy's records, obtained through a formal public-records request: 620 students enrolled over 14 years, 44 finished. NCRA's own Annual School Reports: a 14.4% average graduation rate, which NCRA itself calls "extremely low."
Federal education data: court reporting graduates fell from 747 in 2000 to 287 in 2022. Every source is cited on our completion-rates page, and the underlying documents are there to download. And the math behind BREVITY is published — the formulas that measure what every outline costs to write, with the work shown, so any reader can rerun the numbers or challenge them.
What's still open: no outside researcher has yet run a controlled study comparing completion rates across theories. That study should exist. The profession has never once tested whether theory design affects who finishes — its own best-practices research examined every variable except this one. We'd welcome that study, and our methodology is public precisely so it can be tested.
That's the standard we hold ourselves to, and it's the standard worth asking of any theory: what can you verify before you pay?