Learn a good steno brief such as RPT for “respect,” and you have done well. You have conquered a common two-stroker with a very easy brief.
But you only learned one word.
Learn a good family of briefs such as “words that end in ‘spect'” and you learn a good handful of very popular words with virtually the same amount of memorization.
If you know RPT is “respect,” then you should also know the outlines for “inspect,” “prospect,” “suspect,” and “disrespect.” Those are the popular ones that can easily be briefed with an initial consonant or two and a final PT.
A bonus to families is that you may learn some of the less popular outlines that don’t deserve attention all by themselves. So if you want, you could also come up with outlines for words like “circumspect,” “aspect,” and a couple more.
It’s a relatively small and very popular family. Here are the only ten words that end in “spect” that you are likely to run across:
Respect, suspect, inspect, prospect — brief these very popular terms
Disrespect — brief it if you find DRPT or SDRPT to be easy strokes
Aspect, retrospect, introspect, circumspect, reinspect — brief them if you can find easy strokes and if they don’t take much time to memorize.
Don’t get fooled into thinking that you have to brief everything. That’s foolish, and it can be quite hurtful.
The court reporting game requires that we learn to write efficiently and accurately. If you can two-stroke something as quickly as you can brief it, then the brief isn’t giving you any speed benefit, plus it will be harder to read when you misstroke it.
You should know how to stroke all ten of these words with no trouble and you should have very quick outlines for most of them. If that describes you, then you don’t need more work on words that end in “spect.” There are plenty more brief families that you can work on.
Steve Shastay
Steno Rebel