Holidays

As we enter the holiday season, we face unique challenges as captioners.  Hoe, Hoe, Hoe and all that.  Suddenly, I have to throw and asterisk into a seemingly innocent stroke HOE to get Ho, Ho, Ho.  I have to make sure Santa Claus is in my dictionary so I don’t get “Santa clause,” unless of course the Tim Allen movie is being referred to, in which case I must write “SAN/TA SP-S KLAUZ,” where SP-S is my stroke for “space,” because if you have kids and/or you’ve seen the movie, you know the title is “Santa Clause 2.”  Cute play on words but a nightmare for a captioner.

Along the same lines but unrelated to the holidays, I got “killed” this morning on nursery rhymes.  Since I write “occurred” KURD (the following will illustrate why such briefs are a bad idea), I must write Kurd (people from Kurdistan) K*URD.  And who knew I’d actually need a stroke for “curd,” as in “curds and whey,” not to mention a stroke for “whey”?  I write “way” WAEU, “weigh” WAE, and the suffix “~way” WA*EU.  I’m quite proud of this solution to all these “ways,” I might add.  Not so proud after this morning’s unexpected news report about a Mother Goose parade in San Diego, where the reporter challenged parade-goers to finish popular nursery rhymes.  It went something like this (the blue represents an untran):

>> LITTLE JACK HORNER SAT IN THE CORNER.

>> EATING CRURDS AND WAY.

>> THAT'S LITTLE MISS MUFFET.

I had a good idea to use my KR- (phonetically defined as CR-) to try to achieve “curds,” which I use for other conflicts like “cell” KREL and “ceiling” KRAOELG, but it wasn’t in my dictionary, so it didn’t work.  I was actually mad at myself that it wasn’t in my dictionary, because believe it or not, “curds and whey” actually came up once before in the last few months.  I was also disappointed that “whey” wasn’t in my dictionary.  Even if it were, though, I wouldn’t have written it correctly, because I mistakenly thought it was spelled “wey.”  At the next commercial break, I looked it up and decided on WHA*EU for “whey.”  Now, I just hope next time it comes up, I’ll remember KRURD/S and WHA*EU!

>> LITTLE JACK HORNER --

>> SAT IN THE CORNER.

>> LITTLE JACK HORNER SAT IN A CORNER EATING HIS CHRISTMAS PIE, STUCK IN HIS THUMB AND PULLED OUT A PLUM AND SAID WHAT A GOOD BOY AM I.

>> PETER, PETER PUMPKIN EATER.

>> HAD A WIFE AND COULDN'T EAT HER.

OR COULDN'T KEEP HER.

>> NO, THAT WOULD BE HANNIBAL, HANNIBAL.

>> HEY DEADLE DEADLE --

>> CAT AND THE FIDEL.

The stroke DEUD was globaled as “dead”; hence DEADLE.  And FEUD/L was globaled as Fidel.  I don’t think the nursery rhyme was referring to Fidel Castro’s cat.

>> NO, THE CANDLE RAN AROUND THE SPOON.

[ LAUGHTER ]

>> MUST BE THE ALTITUDE IN EL CAJON.

>> HEY, DIDDLE DIDDLE --

>> COME BLOW YOUR FIDDLE?

I DON'T KNOW.

A good captioner never makes the same mistake twice.  I had the good sense to throw in an asterisk this time on the DEUD stroke and another one on the final “L” stroke on FEUD/L for a perfect translation.  Whew! 

>> MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB?

>> AS FLEECE AS WHITE AS SNOW.

SHE --

[ LAUGHTER ]

I DON'T REMEMBER.

Admittedly, I was clenching my teeth as I wrote “fleece,” afraid it was going to translate as a misstroke for “nice” or something.  But voila!  Fleece it was!

>> BA BA BLACK SHEEP.

>> RAN AWAY.

I would have liked to have seen “bah, bah, black sheep,” but at least I didn’t end up with a communist dictatorJ!

To wrap up, I suggest we all enter into our dictionary the various holidays and holiday terms, because they’re bound to come up at one time or another.  Here’s a list I’ve compiled, but I’m sure I’ve left something out, and I apologize in advance if I have.

Rosh Hashanah 

Yom Kippur

Hanukkah

Chanukkah

Hanukah

dreidel

Menorah

Passover

St. Lucia

Lussekatt buns

Gingersnaps

Kwanzaa

Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga

Nguzo Saba

Habari Gani?

Ramadan

Allah

siyaam

Eid ul-Fitr

Quran

Christmas

Santa Claus

reindeer

yuletide

Winter Solstice

Yule

mistletoe

New Year’s

Auld Lang Syne

Rose Bowl

millennium

Happy Chanukah, Yuletide Greetings, Happy Winter Solstice, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year, Feliz Navidad, Habari Gani?!

Captioning Practice Techniques

  

Once you’ve made the decision to become a captioner, the majority of your time will be spent practicing with the TV.  Here are a few tips to not only become familiar with the way people speak on TV, but how to build your confidence and not feel like you’re getting “killed.”

When you first sit down to practice with the TV, I suggest choosing a program that you are familiar with, that you’ve watched on a semi-regular basis, such as your local news or cable news like MSNBC or CNN.  Stay away from talk shows and sports programs, as they are extremely fast.  This may seem obvious to some, but local news usually airs at 5:00 p.m., 5:30 p.m., and 6:00 p.m., followed by national news (World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Nightly News with Brian Williams, The Evening News with Dan Rather, ABC, NBC, and CBS respectively) at 6:30 p.m.  And of course, 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. news is also local.  Cable news programs are usually 24 hours a day. 

Many local news programs are not captioned.  Some use teleprompter captions.  This is easily detectable when they switch to a reporter in the field and the captions suddenly stop.  I suggest taping the program with the captions on so you can compare your writing with the captioner's.  But do turn the captions off while you're practicing.  Save the comparisons for afterwards, because it is way too distracting.  For what it’s worth, I recommend practicing with MSNBC, because I know the company that captions it has very capable and qualified captioners.  In the arena of local news, I can also recommend Fox 5 WNYW in New York and UPN9 WWOR in New York.  All the national network news programs are captioned by reputable and qualified companies as well.

First, tape a half hour of the program, watch it first and jot down any names that come up, including reporters’ and anchors’ names. Create a job dictionary for that program, because you don't want all those names in your main dictionary. However, down the road you will discover many of the cable news reporters (MSNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel) and national network news reporters (ABC, NBC, and CBS) often switch networks.  So those names I keep in my main dictionary.  But if there's a man who committed some awful crime in your area that's not going to make headlines anywhere else, you can put that name in your job dictionary.  I also have what’s called a “Current” job dictionary that I put names of people in the news today but won’t necessarily be talked about three years from now.  You have to be careful, though, because a big case today may die down for a couple of years and then come back in the news at the time of trial or parole, etc. 

Next after you watch the tape and prep from it, then write the first ten minutes straight through.  Don't stop to edit or add anything. After that you can edit or add names or words to your dictionary.   Then write the same ten minutes over again.  Continue with that pattern until you feel comfortable with that ten minutes.  Don’t be surprised if you don’t feel comfortable for a long time.  It’s possible it could take days, weeks, or months depending on how much time you devote to this exercise.  Once you do feel comfortable, move on to the next ten-minute segment and repeat the process until you've finished the whole half-hour program.  At that point, start from the beginning and write the entire 30 minutes without stopping (except to fast-forward through the commercials).

Don’t be discouraged at how difficult and awkward it is writing the news, or any TV program, because they talk differently than we were trained to write.  We were trained to write very monotone speaking patterns, back and forth, Q & A.  And once you start working, you get used to the way lawyers speak (and witnesses for that matter).  This is very different.  At first it is hard to get a rhythm going.  Do not get discouraged.  It just takes practice to retrain your ear.  In time it will become second nature.

          Next time I’ll talk about dictionary building in a little more detail.  After practicing just a few times with the TV, you’ll begin to notice how much of the English language we don’t use as court reporters.

      

Captioning Names

It seems that 90% of captioning is names.  Ah, names, names, names.  I often wonder what happened to the simple names, like Mary Jones or Joe Smith.  In broadcast captioning, I am never surprised to learn those names could be spelled Marey Jonez or Jo Smyth.  It’s enough to make you crazy.  The good news is most captioning companies use all caps, so you do not have to have separate entries in your dictionary to distinguish between bill/Bill, pat/Pat, or bob/Bob.  The bad news is sometimes you have to get very creative to distinguish between Antoine (Walker), Antwan (Harris), Antawn (Jamison), and Antwuan (Dixon), all sports figures.  I’m not making this up.  I actually did a NCAA basketball in which three of the above players were playing in the same game.  The strokes you choose to distinguish the different spellings are not important; what’s important is that you remember them. 

Enter: Post-It notes.  Ah, the all-important “cheat sheets.”  I use them often, and I use them in great numbers.  They’re posted all over my office.  Hey, whatever works. 

Now, you can word-global Antawn + Jamison together.  You can do that with all of the above names.  I have them all that way in my Sports dictionary.  However, when they simply say AN/TWAN without the last name, you’ve got to have a unique stroke to distinguish who they’re talking about.  And you’ve got to know who they’re talking about.  In the above situation, I have a separate cheat sheet for similar names, indicating which team they’re on, the color of their shirts, and their number.  So when the announcer says AN/TWAN, I can quickly determine which person is intended.  Of course, that has to be done within a matter of milliseconds.  No problemJ

Because of all the names that come up in any one broadcast, be it a sports program or news, it is doubly important to purge your dictionary of multi-word phrases you’ve come so reliant on.  I suggest creating a job dictionary called Depositions or Court and moving those entries there so you can still use them while you practice your captioning.  Many times, during a local newscast, for example, a non-famous person’s name is mentioned.  And if I can, I will either fingerspell it (type one letter at a time which will glue together) or I’ll type a series of strokes connected by delete space (I use TK-L, defined in my dictionary as a delete space).  Say the name is Fosteter.  I might stroke it out as TPOS/TK-L/TET/ER.  In the old days, for me, that would have translated as “PHILOSOPHYAT THE TIMER.”  Ugh, that would look just awful on the TV screen being seen by perhaps millions!  Not to mention the deaf or hard-of-hearing viewer has no idea who or what they’re talking about.

Briefs are fine for names that come up frequently.  I use P-B/P-B for President Bush, J-B/J-B for George W. Bush, D-FP/D-FP for Dick Cheney.  I keep these in my main dictionary.  B-K/B-K for Bill Clinton is still in my main dictionary even though his term is up.  He still comes up in the news quite frequently.  I just created a brief for Bonny Lee Bakley, Robert Blake’s late wife.  BL-B/BL-B will remain in my “Current” dictionary until that case dies down.  However, I will leave the strokes for Bonny Lee Bakley (BON/AOE LAOE BAEUK/LEU) in my main dictionary forever, as her name is bound to come up years down the road and her first name is spelled with a “Y.” 

My “Current” dictionary is a job dictionary that I put entries of the day (or month or year in some cases).  There are too many names to count related to the September 11^th attacks.  Osama Bin Laden (OB/OB) will remain in my main dictionary probably forever, but many of the others will reside in my current dictionary probably for a couple of years.  I go through that dictionary every couple of months and delete entries that are no longer in the news.  For sports, I have individual team dictionaries, so R-K/R-K for Roger Clemens will always reside in my “New York Yankees” dictionary.  On game day, I simply merge the two team dictionaries, the network dictionary with all the speaker ID’s into a “game day” dictionary that might be called “Yankees and Red Sox 040102.”  Before I start the game, I will write all my briefs to make sure they’re all in tact.  It’s possible I used

R-K/R-K for a Red Sox player, in which case I’ll get rid of that one, because Yankees players always supersede everyone else.  That’s another story!

You may notice my briefs do not include vowels (with the exception of OB/OB—see note below*).  I was in the habit of writing my briefs with vowels and now see why that is a bad idea.  Oftentimes, these briefs will cause word boundary problems, or simply a mistroke can result in a double stroke.  Example:  Let’s say you have KAR/KAR defined as Johnny Carson in your dictionary.  The sentence should read: “She stayed at the Carlisle Hotel.”  SHE STAEU/D AT –T KAR/LAOEL * KAR/LAOEUL HOE/TEL.  This may translate as “She stayed at the Johnny Carson Lyle Hotel.”  A better choice for Johnny Carson might be K-R/K-R. 

*I know, I know, OB/OB contradicts everything I just said.  Well, what can I say?  I’m not perfect.  A couple of years ago, his name was coming up a lot in the news.  I came up with a not-so-good stroke, and it stuck.  Fortunately (knock on wood), I haven’t had any problems with it, so for now it stays!

Another challenging area related to names is the creation of speaker identification.  Some shows, especially sports, require the captioner to distinguish one broadcaster from another.  Because of the speed of the event, I use one-stroke briefs for speaker ID’s, and then I double it to get the speaker’s full name.  For example, I define M-R to translate as >> Marv:  But when I stroke M-R/M-R, it will translate as Marv Albert.  This is extremely helpful when he says, “Marv Albert here, alongside Steve “Snapper” Jones and Bill Walton.”  They do these intros terribly fast.  Incidentally, I sometimes use triple strokes for names that include a nickname.  So ST-F is >> Steve:  and ST-F/ST-F is Steve Jones, but ST-F/ST-F/ST-F is Steve “Snapper” Jones.  I think speaker ID’s are the most difficult part about writing sports.  The key is, I think, to choose strokes that are comfortable to stroke and easy to remember. 

Unfortunately, you may encounter more than one Mike or Tom from the same network.  As a rule, I try to use their initials as my stroke, but that’s not always possible.  A great solution I’ve come up with is to use the OEU stroke for some.  For example, M-K is my Mac~ prefix, so I can’t use that for Mike.  So I use M-RN for Mike Breen, because it makes sense.  But turns out Mike Dunleavy is announcing the game with Mike Breen.  M-D is Monday.  So I go with MOEUK.  It’s the only time I use vowels in my speaker ID’s.  I use POEUT for Pat Croce and LOEUFP for Lewis Johnson.  I use BOEUB for Bobby Murcer and B-RB for Bob Murcer, as sometimes they like to shake things up on me.  You get the idea.

To wrap things up, the bottom line is there are several ways to spell the same name.  And just when you think you’ve figured them all out, someone will pop up with yet another way.  I probably have five entries for the name Christie (Kristy, Christy, etc.).  I couldn’t tell you what they are offhand.  But I can tell you they’re in there.  A quick check at the commercial break is all I need.

Until next time, happy captioning!

Captioning Training - The Basics

I have done many seminars and webinars on broadcast captioning, and the reality is there is just too much information to cram into a day or a couple of hours.  So this article will be the first in a series on broadcast captioning for those of you interested in pursuing this career path.

I will start with the basics.  I’m sure you’re already working on your realtime writing, so I won’t go into a lot of detail on realtime itself.  However, I would like to touch on a few realtime items related to captioning specifically.  The first of which—alphabets.  Since the majority of captioning companies uses all caps, you don’t have to worry about a lowercase alphabet.  Here are the four alphabets I use:

A-FPLT = A

will glue to all alphabets and numbers, example: ABC COMPANY or MODEL NUMBER A57GH3.

A-FRPBLGTS = -A

spelling alphabet, example A-D-A-M-S.  My software removes the hyphen before the first letter of the spelling sequence.  If yours does not, you must write A-FPLT for the first letter.

A-6789 = A.

for abbreviations with periods or initials, example F.B.I. or John F. Kennedy.  This may be a little awkward for some writers, especially those who do not use the number bar, like myself.   But it’s just basically stroking the 6789 and FPLT keys at the same time.

A*-FPLT  = A.

Although I have most of the letters of this alphabet defined the same as the previous alphabet, this one is a special one in that it is available for things like E! Entertainment Network (E*-FPLT) or 4x4 Truck (KP*-FPLT, my X, a lowercase X surrounded by delete space will result.).

Next subject, punctuation.  If you have any kind of stacking problem in conjunction with your punctuation, consider changing the affected punctuation.  Like a lot of reporters, I frequently stacked “it,” “had,” “a,” etc. with my period, FPLT, to result in T, H, A, etc.  I decided it was time that I change my period.  Unfortunately, the first selection I made was an unwise one, P-D, and caused too many problems with words ending in “ED.”  So I changed it AGAIN!  Not an easy feat, I admit, but the result three years later, I think, is a good one.  I went with

P-P, which was my brief for “preponderance.”  I think it’s fair to say I’ve written that word maybe once since I started captioning, so writing it out was not a big deal.  Keep in mind changing punctuation, let alone any stroke, is a huge commitment.  However, it would be much easier to do while reporting than while realtiming for someone or captioning.  I find the easiest way to remember a new stroke is to remove the old one from my dictionary.  This way when you write the old stroke, it will not translate, and it will stick out like a sore thumb, assuming you’re writing realtime for yourself.  Obviously, I do not recommend this if you’re realtiming for an attorney or deaf or hard-of-hearing client.  When I have to change a stroke without removing it from my dictionary, it takes three times as long to master it.  There are some that I still haven’t been able to master.

Finally, I want to talk about coming back in a separate stroke for suffixes.  You, like me, may be resistant.  I can understand coming back for the -S ending on a word like “meanings.”  I had mistroked that word so many times that when I wanted “means,” I got “meanings,” and when I wanted “meanings,” I got “meaning.”  The only way around this was to come back so that what was once written MAOENGS would now be written MAOEN/G/S.  It was necessary because I often mistroked -GS for -S, so -GS could no longer be defined as ~INGS. 

What may be harder to understand is, what is the harm in writing STOPPING as STOP-G?  For starters, if you get in the habit of always coming back, you can be more confident the root word will be in your dictionary as opposed to the root word with the suffix.  So for my example above, STOP is definitely in my dictionary, but can I be sure STOP-G is?   Well, that’s a simple word, but it’s been my experience that there are many other not-so-common words that have come up and the theory proved true.  Also, I think it makes you a cleaner writer.  Of course, there are times when it’s just so fast that I “slip” and write certain words in one stroke.  If you decide to take on this task, be aware that you may write words like JONES in two strokes.  Just habit now.  As a court reporter, I was constantly trying to decrease the number of strokes I would write.  As a captioner, it seems, it is just the opposite.

Well, that’s it for now.  In future issues, I will cover such topics as building your captioning dictionary, practicing with the TV, and how to edit on the fly.  

How to get started in captioning

I often get asked the question:  How do I get started in captioning?  I put together this response:

Most of the work you will need to do to transition from court reporter to CART provider and captioner is done on your own. 

Coast 2 Coast Captioning offers the Broadcast Captioning Training (BCT) Series, a series of webinars which covers every topic you will need to know in order to be a broadcast captioner. There are nine webinars, two hours each. You can earn up to 1.8 NCRA CEU's. Visit my website to view the topics and to order: https://www.c2ccaptioning.com/bct.html.  

Once you have completed at least six of the seminars, you may apply for one-on-one follow-up training. At this time, you will have the opportunity to ask questions and I will offer you guidance on next steps. I will evaluate your practice files and give you advice. I am always available via email if you have questions along the way, however, so feel free to reach out. It is important that your realtime skills are at a certain level before the follow-up training, as most of that will be done on your own and at your own pace.

There are many webinars within the BCT series that will benefit you as it relates to your realtime training. So my suggestion to you is to order the CART Provider's Guide, https://www.c2ccaptioning.com/products.html, to get you started with the ins and outs of CART, and to complete the Broadcast Captioning Training Series, https://www.c2ccaptioning.com/bct.html.  I also recommend these free documents located on the Products page, https://www.c2ccaptioning.com/products.html:

Realtime Broadcast Captioning: Recommended Style and Format Guidelines for U.S. Programming

Consumer Awareness and Recommended Style and Format Guidelines for Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) Providers

I also recommend this free document located on the Products page, which I helped create during my time with the NCRA Captioning Community of Interest. A good percentage of this document was taken right from my Training Manual:

https://www.c2ccaptioning.com/products.html:

Realtime Broadcast Captioning: Recommended Style and Format Guidelines for U.S. Programming

The next thing I would tell you to do is join the broadcast captioners group on Yahoo, http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/broadcastcaptioners/info. There is a great deal of information there.  Read through all of the past threads before posting a question though.  Chances are your question(s) have been answered.  Also peruse the Files section.  

NCRA has a Captioning group on Facebook:  

https://www.facebook.com/groups/47951054887/?bookmark_t=group 

and LinkedIn also has a Broadcast Captioning group:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Broadcast-Captioning-CART-2259922?trk=myg_ugrp_ovr.

There is also a lot of information and related links on www.ncra.org.  Gary Robson is very well-known and has written a lot of articles on captioning. His website is www.robson.org.  I would begin changing my writing (a must).  Another great tool is Caption Accelerator, available at 

http://www.stenograph.com/Category.aspx?id=1470001&subid=4950001&childid=5030001. 

After you change your writing, begin dictionary building. There are two great tools for that – Dictionary Jumpstart, www.dictionaryjumpstart.com, and Catapult, www.CRRBooks.com.  But be careful not to begin adding all of these words to your dictionary until you have made significant changes to your writing or you’ll have to do it all over again.

There are also a number of captioning-related E-seminars offered through NCRA at http://ncra.inreachce.com/.   Another online training site is 

http://www.realtimefitnessonline.com/.

Finally, I suggest going to every seminar, workshop and/or boot camp related to captioning that you can find.  NCRA annual conventions will have at least 3 seminars related to captioning each year.  If your realtime is not up to par, you may want to attend an Anita Paul seminar.  Her web address is www.anitapaul.com.  

As far as equipment, Stenograph offers captioning software called BCS, which is an add-on to CaseCatalyst.  However, I highly recommend Eclipse AccuCap.  It is definitely a personal choice, though, and I would urge you to do some research before making a final decision.  There are other pieces of equipment required for captioning, which I also cover in my Broadcast Captioning Training Seminar series.

Broadcast captioning is a wonderful, challenging, and exciting career.  The journey from court reporter to captioner involves hard work, a lot of time, a great deal determination and dedication.  There are no shortcuts, and it is not easy; however, it is well worth the effort once you arrive. 

Ch-ch-ch-changes - Dictionary Building

        Well, fall is upon us, and with the changing of the leaves, I want you to begin to change the way you write.  Change is hard.  Not many people like change.  But as Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of species that survives nor the most intelligent but the one most responsive to change.”  Well, that quote couldn’t be more fitting for a court reporter trying to become a good captioner.  There are two elements to this—theory modification and dictionary building. 

        I gather those of you making the transition from traditional court reporting to realtime and, perhaps, captioning have already begun to change your writing.  There is a great pool of material out there addressing specific writing styles, so I won’t go into that.  However, I would like to touch upon dictionary building, which is so important to captioning, whether for television or CART.

        I remember the early days CART’ing in the classroom when trying to get down a particularly speedy professor reciting an array of biology terms.  The word “allele” came up over and over again.  Unfortunately, I got through biology in high school by cheating off my friend.  Hey, nobody’s perfect!  Anyway, even if I knew what “allele” meant, it was still going to translate as “ALEGAL”—over and over and over again!  I quickly threw an asterisk in the “HRAOEL” stroke and probably got something like “ALEEL.”  At least she could read it.

        The point is all those seemingly innocent briefs we have in our dictionary to save us from writing an extra stroke at any cost will surely come back to haunt us when captioning.  After all, when I created the brief for “legal” (or adopted it, more likely, from a list given to me in theory class), it never occurred to me that it would cause a problem later on.  That is just one example of hundreds of potential problem entries. 

Ideally, you want each stroke to match itself phonetically; i.e. TET (not “at the time”), TAT (not “at that time”), AG (not “ago”), NAD (not “in addition).  Only then can you be assured when you write a multi-stroke word and for some reason or another it does not translate, you are not left with nonsensical phrases.

        I suppose I should have named this article dictionary purging rather than building, because you can spend just as much time deleting entries as you can adding them.  As previously suggested, move all those entries to a job dictionary, such as COURT or DEPOS, that can be loaded for your court reporting work while you practice captioning.

Ah, but you’re thinking, “That means when captioning I have to write everything out!”  I have some nerve, don’t I?  You may have heard this before, so I’ll reiterate.  Writing everything out will not slow you down.  You will only be slowed down if you hesitate before a stroke, which oftentimes happen with briefs—“I know I have a brief for it; now if I could only remember what it is.”

        Just try eliminating a couple briefs at a time, preferably the ones that come up all the time.  It will be easier to remember if you write a particular brief several times in one sitting.  Incidentally, briefs without vowels are safer.  You may want to just eliminate the vowel from the brief instead of the whole thing.

        As for dictionary building, simply go to the internet.  Pick a popular news site, such as CNN, read the top stories and make sure any world leaders’ names are in your dictionary.  Do a search on www.google.com for White House staff, the current and past Administrations, presidents, prime ministers, and world leaders (past and present).  Enter all those names.  Do another search for large cities throughout the world.  Enter all results.  Make briefs for every state.  I use double strokes without vowels, with the exception of a couple that I haven’t been able to think of anything.  

Some examples:

B-M/B-M=Alabama

M-T/M-T=Montana

N-P/N-P=New Hampshire

N-K/N-K=North Carolina

T-BGS/T-BGS=Texas

W-G/W-G=Wyoming

You get the idea.

Go to an entertainment site, such as E! or People, and enter all the names of top celebrities in the news today.  Do a search for past Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy winners.  I think you get the idea.  Just look through a TV Guide.  Anybody on TV should be in your dictionary.

Also enter well-known corporations.  Again, do a search on Google to obtain that information.  Be aware of different spellings.  For example, there’s a Cisco (company, SEUS/KOE), Sysco (company, SAOEUS/KOE), and Sisqo (singer, SEUS/KWOE).  Not only do you have to know the spelling variations, but you have to know how to write each one.

        It’s also a good idea to have notorious people in your dictionary (like the Manson family and serial killers, for example).  They’re always coming up for parole or are on death row and will be in the news.

        Finally, sports figures.  Again, use the internet, www.ESPN.com has a link to each sport, which includes every roster of every team, including coaching staffs.  Of course, you are not going to enter every athlete at this time, but I would suggest reading through the top stories and entering those for now.  Put your sports figures into a job dictionary called Sports.  If you end up captioning, you can build upon that.

        And remember, as fall approaches, try not to fall back into bad habits with your writing!  Until next time…ciao!