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Skip to contentA system to learn from. A tool to practice with.
Whether you’re starting steno or have been reporting for years, explore a practical approach to learning and practicing your writing.
BREVITY: The Theory takes you from your first keys to writing words and testimony. Learn what to write and why, with explanations, practice drills, and printed steno notes to help you check your work.
Read back from the beginning. Learn familiar words and how to write unfamiliar ones from sound.
Your online access includes the theory book, updates during your access period, and the BREVITY Woodshedder.
Explore BREVITY: The TheoryThe BREVITY Woodshedder lets you work through overlapping word groups and complete sentences at a pace you choose. Write, read back your notes, then reveal the text to check yourself.
Try it free for seven days with a selected 160-WPM drill.
Try Woodshedder free for seven daysBeautiful outline. How does it behave in the fifth hour?
An outline that looks good on a page still has to work under your fingers.
BREVITY: Write Simply offers outlines and techniques you can work into your existing writing. Keep what works. Start with the words that keep tripping you up.
Explore Write SimplyLook beyond stroke count. Examine the measurements, reasoning, and demands behind stenographic writing—and use them to think more carefully about your own.
Explore The Science of StenoBook a private consultation with Tom. Ask one question and get a written answer, or book a 30-minute Zoom appointment where he reviews a short sample of your writing beforehand.
See consultation optionsIs 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?
