Four-voice steno pads?

I seem to recall reading on this site somewhere that there was still one company around that produces steno pads for four-voice proceedings, with extra lines down the left-hand side of each column. Can anyone share the link, and put it up in the Links section if possible?

Thanks 🙂

(by niftyboy1 for everyone)
 


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  1. Wow, Chuck, I just took a look at the picture of the 4-voice steno pad.  How does it work?  I mean, what goes where?  Do you put an "x" in a particular column to show who's talking?  My mind is quite boggled yet intrigued!   I wonder how machine-reporters handle indicating who is speaking?  Hmmmm.   I'd love to have the opportunity to watch court reporters, especially pen reporters, in action.  Someday….–Alison    

  2. The notebooks are manufactured by W.G. Fry Corporation in Massachussetts. Their web site is http://www.fry-kamket.com. They make notebooks of different spacings. The RG-62 is Gregg Ruled. The RG-63 is intermediate between Gregg and Pitman. Pengad (www.pengad.com) sells the RG-63, albeit very expensive! I got a 5 pack of RG-62s from eBay for about $10.00 a long time ago.

    I will add the link to the site.

  3. Wah, I understand its a complicated task for todays printers to print lines both diagonally AND vertically, but $71 is still a tad overpriced in my opinions.

    If you look at Andrew Owen's site, you'll see that the different voices are differentiated by from which box you begin writing your shorthand. If you begin writing in the first box, then that's voice 1 and yada yada. Its such a simple and useful idea for so many things, that I wonder why I never thought of it.

    Eg. At school when you're taking notes, you sometimes have multiple subtopics on which the teacher is talking about. Teachers don't always keep on a direct line. Instead of allocating space and trying to leave enough space, you can just place the different topics starting in different boxes.
    Sort of like the TAB functionality on Microsoft Word.

  4. troutgirl: On the pad, you decide beforehand which column represents who (usually by writing the names before at the appropriate line), then when they speak, you start writing at that vertical line.

    On the stenotype, there are several ways you can go about it, since you can customize your dictionary to change what strokes are what. If you know the names (you should), the most common strokes are:
    * first letters/initials of the person on the left keybank, and all of the keys on the right at the same time.
    * you make a stroke that represents that person's office in the court or their name and just repeat it twice (witness "w-sz" might be "w-sz w-sz" to make "THE WITNESS: ")

    If you don't know the names, there are various strokes in the dictionary that are repeated and make things like "SPEAKER ONE ON THE LEFT: " but I don't know any of those yet.

    For just Q and A, it's a little simpler. I draw a vertical line down the left side of each column, and start the question going through the line, with the answer spaced a little after the question if it's short on the same line, or on the next line after the vertical line. You can see this in one of the documents available on this site.

    On the stenotype, all the keys on the left bank STKPWHR make Q: and stick a period at the end of the last answer, and all the keys on the right side FRPBLGTS make the A: and put a ? on the end of the last question.

  5. Thanks, NiftyBoy1.  It sounds like the penwritten method would be MUCH easier for me if I were writing down what 4 different people were saying.  Well, that and the fact I don't know how to operate a stenotype machine.  You have my admiration, indeed.   Luckily, the dictation I take is from one person at a time, in a nice, quiet, office environment.  I am spoiled.  –Alison

  6. In the Learning Aids folder of the Documents section, I added a document called "court-reporter-pad.pdf", which you can print. It is a blank sheet, Gregg ruled, with the court reporting vertical lines. The paper is already formatted to 6" x 9", so if you're using 8.5" x 11" paper, you would need to cut it after you print it.

    Cheaper than $71.00 …

  7. You can get the 4-voice steno pads (RG-63) from Pengad.    Chuck, I wrote to the folks you recommend and they told me they don't do that item.  The Pengad pads are Gregg ruled and the paper is very smooth.  It's great for fountain pen writing.    It's about $67 for a dozen.    Peter

  8. The rulings are divided as follows:   First column to the middle ruling is for the questioning attorney.   The second ruling to the middle is for the witness.   The third column is for the objecting attorney.   The forth column is for the Court.

  9. The notebooks are a bit more awkward than your typical steno notebook.  When they arrived I was surprised by the thickness of the notebooks.  The paper takes free flowing ink very nicely.  I hadn't realized how much drag rough paper creates on a pen.  That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

  10. Excellent. Thanks for the information! Like I said, I got them in eBay sometime ago, and the lady who sold them to me told me that she had tons of them! I wonder if she is still selling those.

    The pads are good. The only thing I don't like is that since the paper is heavier, the notebook feels heavy to write on, and the thickness of the notebook is larger than usual. But other than that, it is a good notebook.

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