| QUESTION: I was fortunate to have you substitute for our class a few nights ago and wanted to thank you for offering a different perspective. What I have been doing is not working for me. I am confused about when we should begin building our dictionaries. I have heard differing stories. What is your opinion? ANSWER: In the old days, dictionaries were built from scratch, word by word by word. Nowadays, all CAT software comes with a pretty big dictionary. A lot of work is saved. But not all of the work is saved. We could both start with the standard dictionary, but we both must tailor that dictionary to our individual writing patterns. We need different strokes in our dictionaries. Any standard CAT dictionary needs modification before it is ready to support you. Even the guys who write the theories need to modify their own individual dictionairies. Here is what I imagine happened on one fine day during development of the theory that I teach. A guy stands up and says to a group, "Okay, we have six votes for Choice A, four votes for Choice B, three votes for Choice C, and one vote apiece for Choices D through L." We are going to use the top three choices and the rest of you guys just shut up." I believe that my theory book shows me three ways to write "New York" because the authors had a wild meeting like that. Nobody was willing to budge. Each had their own personal preference. They appeased those who liked Choices A, B and C by putting their strokes in the theory. But I will bet my bottom dollar that the guys who liked Choices D through L did not change their strokes. Working on your dictionary will pay off big. You will learn to write realtime. That is a huge benefit. This is the computer age. CAT software can be an unparalleled teaching tool, and it should be utilized. The computer is a steno student's best friend. The more that you work on your dictionary and the more you write realtime, the more you will focus on getting your translation rate up to par. You will become exasperated when common words continue to be misstroked; subsequently, you will focus on them and clear them up. You will look for material that contains new words so that your tran rate stays high on all material. Imagine that!! Building your dictionary whets your appetite for technical and medical dictation. All kinds of good things happen when you build your dictionary, and absolutely no bad ones happen. Truthfully, I think that almost all of your practice could involve dictionary building. You can only build your dictionary if you write a lot, read your notes a lot, and focus on clarity a lot. I like that idea a lot. Steve Shastay |