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.