You already know this feeling.
It’s hour 1 of the deposition. You’re fresh. The stroke you’re writing for “percentage” feels smooth. Your fingers know what to do.
Fast forward to hour 6.
Same stroke. Same word. But now? Your fingers fumble. You catch yourself thinking: “Wait, which keys again?” The stroke that worked perfectly this morning is falling apart.
What changed?
Not the word. Not the stroke. What changed is you.
And here’s the critical question: Can we predict which strokes will fail at hour 6?
The answer is yes. With mathematics.
Going Deeper Than Key Count
For years, I’ve used key count as a primary metric for evaluating strokes. Fewer keys generally means a better stroke.
And that’s true - as far as it goes.
But here’s what I discovered in 36 years of professional reporting:
Key count tells you PART of the story. But it doesn’t tell you the WHOLE story.
Two strokes with the same number of keys can have wildly different difficulty levels.
Let me show you what I mean.
The Three-Key Test
Here are two strokes. Both use exactly three keys:
Stroke A: Three adjacent fingers on the left hand, all pressing top keys together
Stroke B: Right index finger pressing the top key AND bottom key (crack position), plus the right pinky stretching to reach that far D key at the bottom
Both strokes: three keys.
Key count says they’re equal.
But if you’ve ever written court reporting, you know immediately that Stroke B is harder.
Way harder.
The question is: How much harder?
Is it 10% harder? 50% harder? Twice as hard?
And more importantly: Can we measure the difference in a way that predicts which one will fail at hour 6?
That’s what the Stroke Difficulty Score does. It takes key count and adds three more factors that turn out to matter even more than the number of keys you’re pressing.
The Stroke Difficulty Score (SDS)
After studying motor control research and analyzing thousands of stenographic strokes, I developed a formula that predicts stroke difficulty under real working conditions.
Here’s what it measures:
The formula isn’t trying to predict your theoretical maximum ability. It’s not about what you can do fresh in the morning or for ten minutes during a practice session.
It predicts: How will this stroke perform at hour 6 of your day?
Because that’s what actually matters in professional work.
The Four Things That Make Strokes Hard
The formula looks at four factors:
1. How many keys you’re pressing (K)
This is the obvious one. Three keys versus seven keys. But here’s the surprise: this is actually the LEAST important factor in predicting stroke failure.
2. How your fingers have to coordinate (C)
Are you pressing three adjacent fingers together? (Pretty easy.)
Or are you doing that thing where your right index finger has to press BOTH the top and bottom key at the same time? (Much harder.)
Or are both hands involved, so your brain has to coordinate left and right sides? (Even harder.)
This coordination factor matters more than key count.
3. How fatigue multiplies the difficulty (F)
Some strokes get a little harder when you’re tired. Other strokes get DRAMATICALLY harder when you’re tired.
The strokes with crack positions (same finger pressing top and bottom)? Those degrade fast. The strokes where your pinky has to stretch to that far D or Z key? At hour 6, your tired pinky starts missing.
4. How speed stress affects you (S)
When testimony speeds up, some strokes stay stable. Others start breaking down.
Strokes with lots of keys and complex coordination? They’re the first to fail when the attorney starts talking faster.
The Formula
SDS = K × (1 + C) × (1 + F) × (1 + S)
Let me translate that into plain English:
Take your key count (K).
Multiply it by your coordination difficulty (the “1 + C” part).
Multiply that by how much fatigue makes it harder (the “1 + F” part).
Multiply that by how much speed stress makes it harder (the “1 + S” part).
The result is a single number: your Stroke Difficulty Score.
And here’s what those scores mean:
Below 10: This stroke will work reliably all day long
10-15: Sustainable with practice and attention
15-30: Requires peak performance to maintain
30-50: Unsustainable under pressure - will break down at hour 6
50+: Performance collapse is inevitable
Let’s Calculate Some Real Strokes
Remember those two three-key strokes from earlier? Let’s see what the formula says.
Stroke A: Three adjacent left-hand fingers, all top keys
K = 3 (three keys)
C = 0.2 (adjacent fingers, same hand, easy coordination)
F = 0.15 (barely degrades when tired)
S = 0.2 (stays stable at speed)
SDS = 3 × 1.2 × 1.15 × 1.2 = 4.97
Score: 4.97 = Highly sustainable
Stroke B: Right index in crack position + right pinky far reach to D
K = 3 (three keys)
C = 1.2 (crack position adds significant coordination challenge)
F = 0.8 (crack positions degrade severely when tired, pinky reach gets unreliable)
S = 0.6 (both patterns fail under speed pressure)
SDS = 3 × 2.2 × 1.8 × 1.6 = 21.12
Score: 21.12 = Requires peak performance
The Revelation
Both strokes have three keys.
One has a difficulty score of 4.97.
The other has 21.12.
Same key count. Over 4 times harder.
This is what happens when we go deeper than just counting keys: we discover that coordination complexity matters more than key count.
Key count is the foundation. But coordination, fatigue resistance, and speed stability are the multipliers that determine whether a stroke survives at hour 6.
And when we compare simple three-key strokes to complex seven-key strokes? The difference gets even more dramatic.
(Spoiler: In Monday’s article, we’ll calculate a seven-key traditional stroke with a score of 56.4 compared to a three-key BREVITY stroke with a score of 4.97. That’s over 11 times harder.)
Why This Changes Everything
The Stroke Difficulty Score transforms stenographic analysis from subjective feelings to objective measurement.
Instead of saying:
“This stroke feels harder” (vague and subjective)
“This stroke has more keys” (incomplete picture)
“This stroke is more complex” (what does that even mean?)
We can now say:
“This stroke has a score of 45.2” (precise)
“This stroke is 8.7 times harder than the alternative” (quantified comparison)
“This stroke will degrade 2.5 times more under fatigue” (predictable behavior)
We can predict performance under real-world conditions using mathematics.
The Pattern That Emerges
When I applied this formula systematically across traditional stenographic methods, I discovered something striking:
Traditional multi-key strokes consistently produce difficulty scores of 40-60.
That’s in the “unsustainable under pressure” range.
The 90% dropout rate becomes mathematically predictable.
Students aren’t failing because they lack talent. They aren’t failing because they’re not working hard enough.
They’re failing because they’re being taught strokes that the mathematics predict will collapse under sustained professional conditions.
The Research Foundation
This formula isn’t something I made up. Each factor is grounded in peer-reviewed research from motor control science:
On Key Count and Coordination:
Fitts, P.M. (1954). “The information capacity of the human motor system”
Keele, S.W. (1968). “Movement control in skilled motor performance”
On Hand Coordination:
Kelso, J.A.S., et al. (1979). “On the coordination of two-handed movements”
On Fatigue and Performance Degradation:
Welford, A.T. (1968). “Fundamentals of Skill”
Schmidt, R.A., & Lee, T.D. (2011). “Motor Control and Learning”
I didn’t invent the science. I applied it to stenography for the first time.
What’s Coming Next
Now that you understand the formula, we’re going to get very specific.
Monday’s article: “Seven Common Phrases: The Math Behind MS vs BREVITY”
We’ll take seven phrases you write constantly in depositions and calculate difficulty scores for both traditional methods and BREVITY approaches. You’ll see:
Complete stroke breakdowns for each phrase
Step-by-step score calculations showing exactly where the difficulty comes from
Side-by-side comparisons with real numbers
Why the difference matters when you’re six hours into a deposition
This is where the abstract becomes concrete.
This is where you’ll see the formula in action on the strokes you write every single day.
Try This Before Monday
Pick a phrase you write frequently in depositions.
Count the keys in your stroke.
Think about the coordination:
Same hand, adjacent fingers? That’s easy (C around 0.2)
Crack positions (same finger, top and bottom)? That adds difficulty (C around 0.6-1.0)
Both hands involved? That’s harder (C around 0.8-1.5)
Calculate a rough score using just the keys and coordination:
Quick estimate = K × (1 + C) × 1.5 × 1.5
(I’m using 1.5 for both fatigue and speed as middle-range estimates)
What score do you get?
Below 10? You’re using a sustainable stroke
10-20? Moderate difficulty - manageable with practice
20-40? High difficulty - will degrade under pressure
Above 40? You now know mathematically why hour 6 is so hard
The formula explains what you’ve been feeling all along.
Tom Fernicola is a court reporter with 36 years of professional experience and the creator of BREVITY stenography methodology. This series presents the mathematical analysis supporting evidence-based reform in stenographic education.
Learn more at brevitysteno.com
Next: Article 3 - “Seven Common Phrases: The Math Behind MS vs BREVITY”
This series publishes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.