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Analyzer, Completion rates, The Science of Steno, BREVITY
What Steno Professionals Are Already Saying
"Sometimes I hesitate picking the right brief, and it costs me more time than writing it out. The stroke savings don't always add up."
Professional Forum 2024
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"Focus on high-frequency phrases first. Don't spend time on briefs you'll use rarely."
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BREVITY: Write Simply
BREVITY: Write Simply
Fewer keys. Simpler execution. A documented average of 55% fewer keys across 300 transformations.
You don't switch theories. You change 10–20% of your most common words — the ones you write hundreds of times a day — and keep everything else that already works.
Four techniques that cut keys where you write most:
- Skeletal Writing — consonant frameworks that cut keys without losing the word
- Partial Outlines — your highest-frequency terms, stripped to what's necessary
- Anchor Words — one reliable form instead of a memorized list
- The Chainlink Method — phrases built as they come, no guessing what the speaker says next
BREVITY was designed for the fifth hour of a hostile deposition, not a speed contest. Every unnecessary key is work your fingers don't need to do.
Tom Fernicola has been a working court reporter for 37 years. He built BREVITY to reduce unnecessary mental and physical demands during the job — the same record, with less required to produce it.
Regular price
$498.00 USD
per
Package
Book only
Court reporting isn't just physically demanding – it's mentally grueling. What you're experiencing isn't weakness or lack of skill. It can feel like cognitive overload.
INSTANT KEY ANALYSIS
Real analysis of your real work – no guessing, no estimates.
A Profession in Crisis
When training is designed for statistical outliers, most students are set up to struggle simply for being human.
The solution isn't to make humans more exceptional—it's to make methodologies more human.
The profession prioritizes finger mechanics while overlooking the cognitive demands that many students and practitioners struggle with.
The good news is that these challenges stem from the limits of the method, not from personal shortcomings.
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Critics will say
"This is different."
Others will say
"Different is what we need!"
You will say
"I love this!"
Frequently Asked
Questions
Can I use BREVITY techniques selectively, or must I use them all-or-nothing?
Professional writing systems should never be all-or-nothing propositions. You start gradually, progressively, and according to your professional judgment. Take what enhances your practice, adapt what needs modification, and trust your experience to guide these decisions.
Your court reporting system belongs to you—BREVITY provides tools for making it work better.
What if BREVITY doesn't work for me personally? Will learning these methods interfere with my current writing system?
BREVITY's primary principle is subtracting the unnecessary from your writing. If you can lift 300 pounds, would you worry about lifting 150 pounds?
When methods are designed to reduce unnecessary cognitive burden rather than add complexity, they don't interfere with existing skills—they enhance them. You're not learning a replacement system; you're removing obstacles that have been making your current abilities harder to access.
The techniques work selectively. You can adopt individual methods that feel natural while maintaining everything else exactly as it is. Professional judgment guides which techniques serve your practice, and there's no requirement to use everything.
If a BREVITY technique doesn't feel easier than your current approach, simply continue with what works. The goal is cognitive relief, not system replacement.
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?
How do I decide which BREVITY techniques are worth learning and which ones to skip?
Use The Mileage Principle: assess whether a technique delivers enough value to justify its use. Focus on practical payoff over flawless execution.
Start with high-mileage techniques first—Skeletal Writing for your most common words, Partial Outlines for terms you write constantly. Focus on the 20% of techniques that will improve 80% of your daily writing.
Remember: Good enough, used consistently, beats perfect techniques that sit unused.
How is this different from just writing everything out stroke-by-stroke?
We still use briefs for the most commonly occurring words, but we no longer need huge brief libraries for uncommon words because we now have a much easier and more efficient way of writing them out.
Fewer briefs to learn, fewer briefs to forget. Instead of memorizing thousands of rarely-used outlines, you develop simple approaches that handle any word comfortably.
Can this approach handle specialized terminology effectively?
BREVITY is designed to strengthen foundational writing abilities, which can help when unfamiliar terminology appears unexpectedly in legal proceedings. Since complex cases often include specialized technical terms without warning, the approach emphasizes building reliable skills for writing any word clearly and efficiently.
This is designed to reduce over-dependence on having specific briefs for every possible term. The techniques provide systematic approaches to handling both familiar and unfamiliar content with equal professional confidence.
55% fewer keys — documented, not promised.
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You're not starting over – you're starting smarter.
THE SCIENCE OF STENO: Why Court Reporting is So Hard -- and What the Math Proves
Available in signed hardcover ($249) and paperback ($198).
Court reporting has a dropout rate comparable to Navy SEAL training.
SEAL instructors are trying to make you fail.
And yet the outcome is the same.
Decade after decade. Theory after theory. System after system.
Why?
You've felt it.
The fatigue before lunch. The outlines that fall apart under pressure. The blanks that hit without warning. The quiet suspicion that everyone else has solved something you haven't.
They haven't.
The measurements reveal costs that stroke count alone does not show.
37 years in complex litigation. New York City. A quantitative model applied to stenographic theory.
The result: our model identifies substantially greater capture-time demands in the traditional writing examined.
Not at the limit. Beyond it.
Our model points to why the dropout rate may be built in.
What you were told was wrong. What you experienced was real.
One explanation for why this job feels impossible — and why it was never your fault.
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned to push a boulder up a hill for eternity. It never stayed at the top.
You weren't weak. You were pushing the wrong boulder.
The problem was never you. The problem was the load.
Regular price
$198.00 USD
per
Edition
Paperback