22 Weeks to Go: Shorter

If you're wondering what The Impossible Goal is, you can read about it here.

I've been talking a lot about speed, but I haven't talked much about shortening my writing, which is a key part of this journey as well.  If you're practicing at 6 words a second or faster, the more briefs and phrases, the better.

So I've been learning more phrases and briefs, but not as aggressively as I did in the summer. I've got a pretty full work load this semester, so I've been learning phrases as I hear them, such as "one of those things," "some of these things," etc. which is a stack of the Magnum Steno "these/those" and "thing" phrase endings. (see the book if you want to know how that works)  I'm starting to use *FRB as my "her" phrase ender (with her, to her) because it's the flip side of my "him" phrase ender, *FRP. Hopefully it'll work out.

As I pull up my dictionary to order steno by number of translations or use, my top 10 phrases are:
of the, in the, to the, this is, to be, I think, kind of, on the, at the, it was

Then I look to see what two-stroke entries are the most used, again sorting my dictionary in order of translation count, and I need to work on practicing those as one stroke. My top 10 most used two-strokers:
*going to: TKPWOGT/TO is in place 179 on frequency of entry usage, and it is actually a misstroke entry.  I put it in so it doesn't come up "going to to." Just stick with the TKPWOGT.
*I'll:  EUL/AE, in 274th place.  Should be AO*EUL.
*We'll: doesn't appear until 559th place. Should be WAO*EL, not WEL/AE.
*the colon with two spaces after it (not the colon with no spaces before or after, like in time or Bible verses) is in 794th place.  -FPLT/-FPLT.
*Exactly: (838) Should be KPABLGT, not KPABGT/HRAOE.  Listen in on regular conversations and see how frickin' often people use this instead of "uh-huh" or "I agree."
*Supposed: SPOES/D, should be SPOED or SPOESD, shifting the ring to cover the S and the pinkie to cover the D.
*command to insert the disclaimer at the beginning and end of each CART rough draft -- KHRAEUPL/KHRAEUPL.  Not super necessary to have it as a brief since it's not used during speech, but since it's in the top six two-strokers, I'll make one for it anyway :)
*testing, T*ES/G. Should be T*EFG. (1417)
*you're UR/AE (1437) should be KWR*UR which I do use more often, but still, gotta use it more.
*earlier ERL/ER (1445) should be ______ which I do use more often.

So maybe in a few months I'll pull this entry back up and see if some of these have fallen off the list and which ones I need to work on next.