The 14th International Keyboarding Competition will be held April 11-May 2.
By Maellen Pittman-Fernandez
Time to start your practice sessions for the 14th Intersteno International Keyboarding Competition. This contest, which tests your speed at keyboarding against people from around the world, is held annually in the spring and is open to all ages. Registration in this Intersteno event opens March 14 and runs through April 10. Get your team together and watch for more information about individual and group registration from NCRA in the JCR Weekly and on Facebook.
The contest consists of ten minutes of text entry, using special free software available on Intersteno.org. You may choose to use Taki or Zav format for the test.
The contest is open to students from public or private schools and associations. The results are ranked according to age categories.
The National Court Reporters Association is the Intersteno National Group in the United States.
For those polyglots among us, this contest has a multilingual competition as well as mother tongue. Only one attempt per language is allowed, however. There are further nuances for the multilingual competition to be found on the Intersteno website.
Training exercises for each language in both software formats are available free of charge on the Intersteno website.
The examinations are evaluated based on the total number of written characters, with 50 penalty points deducted for each error. Throughout the three weeks of competition, the results lists are updated in real time for Taki software competitors, with Zav results being consolidated and compiled each evening.
Of note: This competition is open to typing keyboards, and, in addition, chorded keyboards. In other words, you may use your steno writer to compete in these yearly contests.
All successful competitors will receive an Intersteno certificate. Medals are awarded to the three highest ranking competitors in each age category.
The purpose of this competition is to foster keyboard text entry excellence among peers all over the world. Any attempt to manipulate the procedures, interfere with software operations, or engage in hacker activity will lead to automatic disqualification from the current competition and the possibility of being banned from any future participation in the competition.
Intersteno is a worldwide community of motivated people who voluntarily organize and participate in fair, open, and healthy competition. The Intersteno Board is the final authority in the interpretation of the rules and any decision needed for the good of the competition.
Much of the information for this article is to be found on Intersteno.org. If you wish to open a broader horizon, to include competition on the world stage, take a moment and visit.
Mae Pittman-Fernandez, a 2014 Intersteno typing competition participant, while scoring a respectable percentile among the Senior division, highly recommends a few practice sessions prior to the actual competition.
