Why court reporters should not text

[Kyung]

Okay. I finally tried texting. I had a cell phone but I never texted. In fact, I didn't even have that service. Recently I added it on. It's been great. I have more contact with one friend who I can never, ever get ahold of. You call and call and she never returns your calls. (Anyhoo, that's another rant).

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

Do you realize how difficult it is to text when you are used to writing out everything and making sure everything is correct. I find myself typing these long elaborate messages with the correct punctuation and everything, which is completely defeating the purpose of texting. Short, little quicky messages.

Not me, I'm looking for the apostrophe and question mark key on my keyboard. Did I spell that right? Duh!!

Anyhoo, I wonder if I start texting a lot will my spelling skills go down the tubes. We shall see.

In the meantime, must not write out

great = gr8
ttyl = talk to you later
before = b4

Share your little text message briefs w/me & same me some time.

TTYL

Oh, btw, don't text & drive. It's almost as bad as drinking & driving.

[Christine Bedard]

I just started texting about 6 months ago. Thought I was the last person in the world to learn; thought c'mon, how great can it be? LOVE IT! It really is the way people communicate these days.....especially if you have Teenagers, like I do!

[Rhoda Collins]

I'm trying the T nine, but mostly still trying stay away from texting, LOL. I will do it in a moment I can't call. But it is quicker than leaving a VM! That lady I just want to kick when she starts in her LONG spiel to w what UR options are! I'm online too much to also do that on the phone, LOL. I just put in my ear peace and start calling. I'm using my steno keys in case this looks really strange, LOL. It's a law in New Yrk State to not text and drive to. If you can't wait, you are really in trouble with life, IMHO, if you can't just stop or something to do a text, if you need to that bad. We're already too fast paced in life.

[Sharon Kendall]

texting is the next best thing to sliced bread in my opinion. Comes in real handy when you are on a job and can't take a call and are waiting to hear from your son/daughter to know they got to work/home, etc. ok. Great for peace of mind. the more you do it, the better you get. After all, in that five min. break you've only got a zillion other things to take care of rather than calling home - go to the bathroom, change paper, call office, etc.

[Dana Serrano]

I love texting people. But it is hard when you first start because of our proofreading skills. There's actually a website for texting lingo. A couple of them are... http://www.netlingo.com/acronyms.php & http://www.lingo2word.com/index.php. I have enough stuff in my head to remember even a handful of these. Let alone, most of my friends are old like me and wouldn't understand what the heck I was saying if I didn't write it out.

[Brenda Rogers]

Having IM'd a lot over the past 4 yrs, I've gotten over a lot of the obsessive correctness, but I still can't do UR or run sentences together and things like that. (A friend of mine who doesn't punctuate wrote "F*** ms" --my IM name -- and I couldnt figure out what I did to upset her. She re-sent with a comma between the two words, and I felt much better!)

My BB is coming tomorrow and I'll be texting for the first time. I know BTW and LOL and GMTA, those standards. I'm going to do what others have talked about and put some steno shortcuts in -- like YON to translate as I don't know. Once I figure out how to do it, of course!

[lynn darling]

Kyung is so right. Texting and court reporting.....I'm doing good just to remember my steno briefs! Texting is too frustrating. I feel like I'm going to be receiving a correction letter if something's misspelled. E-mail can be that way, too. The court reporter in me just won't let an error go by without sending a follow-up e-mail explaining that I really do know how to spell. My preference is to leave a quick "old fashioned" voicemail, get right to the point, and don't worry about all the back-and-forth responses. Gotta get back to my proofing, editing, etc.;right?

[Debbie Taggart]

LOL! I had to laugh at this thread, because I also have been so proud at my new texting capabilities. But I'm also writing everything out -- "you are" = UR just seems so WRONG. And I'm the Queen of putting all the punctuation in, including dashes and apostrophes. (I like to prove that I know where they are! -- I'm still texting off a telephone number pad...) Tnx 4 the new briefs. I'm going 2 start using them!

[Cynthia S. Bicad]

My niece just came home and is giving me a few more text lingo:
ILY = I love you
BBL = be back later
ur = your

[Rosalie DeLeonardis]

I just upgraded my phone on Monday and I now too can text. I texted everybody "I can text now." Before that, even though I knew what texting was, I couldn't do it, I thought it would be some hard thing to learn. By the way, my 10-year-old taught me.

[April McMillan, CRR, RPR, CSR]

Whew, I thought I was alone in my Type A texting. Got a Blackberry and had to start learning the text lingo, especially since I'm allowed only so many characters per SMS text msg, otherwise I'd still be writing everything out. What's great about a lot of the new phones is they've enhanced txt msg'g capabilities and even have a file with all of the shortcuts for punctuation and writing e-mail and web addresses.
I use briefs listed on the blog and here are a few more:

w/ = with
XO = love
u r = you are
lol = laugh outloud
plz = please
tnx = thanks
TU = thank you
n = and