Glossary
Court Reporter Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential court reporter terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key court reporter vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in court reporter training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- CART
- Communication access realtime translation.
- CAT software
- Computer-aided transcription.
- Certified copy
- An official transcript copy.
- Deposition
- Sworn testimony outside court.
- Errata sheet
- Corrections to a deposition.
- Exhibit
- Evidence marked during proceedings.
- Read-back
- Reading testimony aloud.
- Realtime
- Instant translation of steno to text.
- Rough draft
- An unedited transcript.
- Steno dictionary
- Personal shorthand definitions.
- Stenotype
- A machine for shorthand writing.
- Swearing in
- Administering an oath.
- Transcript
- A written record of proceedings.
- Voice writing
- Speaking into a mask to create transcripts.
- Words per minute
- Writing speed measure.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Court Reporter practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Court Reporter training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.