Being A "Wordie"

I've called my blog "The Voices In My Head", not because I have a mental health disorder (although maybe I do), but because as a court reporter I am constantly listening, listening, listening.  And while I am listening to the judge, the lawyers and the people they represent speak, there is also another voice in my head saying things like "How can I write contemporaneously quicker?", "Why does he keep saying contemporaneously?  Why can't he just say "at the same time"?  I have a one stroke abbreviation for that phrase."

You've probably heard of the term "foodie".  I guess foodies are people that love to learn about, view TV shows about, and eat food.  I am a "wordie".  I am interested in words and language.  I look up words I don't know (thank you Kindle).  As a college student my favorite subject was linguistics.  I was particularly interested in the different ways that men and women use language. 

Working in a courtroom all day is like working in a laboratory for language.  Most lawyers are very skilled communicators, in the setting of the courtroom.  For example, the judge asks an attorney a question that the lawyer either doesn't know the answer to, or the truthful answer would be detrimental to his/her client, and that lawyer will dance all around the question and never really answer the actual question.  At that point the voice inside my head is screaming "Ask him again!" or "Tell him to answer the question directly!". 

(By the way, I'm absolutely sure that I'm not using the quotes correctly in this post.  Please forgive me.)

Because court reporters are so engaged in everything that is being said, we often hear things that others miss.  Although I must say my judge usually catches all the good stuff.  When I did depositions the double and even triple negative statements that people used worried me.  I wondered if the lawsuit actually went to trial what would happen to those double and triple negatives.  Would they let the person clarify their answer?  Would they assume I made a mistake?  Would the whole outcome of the case depend on that answer?

People make mistakes all the time when speaking...all the time.  We all misspeak, judges, lawyers, doctors, engineers, housewives, court reporters, everybody.  These mistakes just wash over most people, but as court reporters we commit these misspeakings to paper and so we notice them more.  Those kinds of speaking errors become one of the things the voice in my head talks about.

But I love the voices in my head.  They encourage me to write quicker, more accurately.  When I was in freelance they helped me get through long, boring depositions that went past 5PM by helping me calculate how much money I was making per page.   Go ahead, keep talking, I need a new dishwasher. 

There's a very Zen-like quality to court reporting.  There's something very peaceful about sitting at your machine, quietly taking down what everyone is saying, and not have to solve anybody's problems or answer anybody's questions.  You're the neutral party in the room, you and your voices.