CA Court Reporter study guide
CA Court Reporter · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The California Certified Shorthand Reporter (CSR) credential is the state's license to work as a court reporter, and it is administered through the Court Reporters Board of California rather than by an independent testing company. Candidates typically pursue it to work in superior court proceedings, depositions, arbitrations, administrative hearings, and captioning-adjacent settings. The CA Court Reporter study guide has 8 sections and about 2,258 words.
01English Language, Grammar, Punctuation, and Spelling
This domain asks you to apply standard written English under the pressure of verbatim transcription. A candidate must command agreement (subject-verb, pronoun-antecedent), the full inventory of verb forms (tense, aspect, mood, voice), the nominative/objective/possessive pronoun cases, and the difference between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses.
307 words, about 2 min02Vocabulary, Word Usage, and Terminology
This domain measures precision. Candidates must distinguish words that are close but not interchangeable, recognize formal register appropriate to the record, and deploy terminology from the courtroom, legal, and medical registers that recur in testimony.
274 words, about 1 min03Transcript Formatting and Court Reporting Procedures
This domain covers the physical and procedural conventions of the certified transcript. Candidates should understand the title page and its certifications, the appearance and index pages, the caption, the case-number and department identifiers, speaker designations (Q/A for direct and cross, "THE COURT," "THE CLERK," "THE WITNESS"), parentheticals for nonverbal events, and the conventions for marking exhibits.
308 words, about 2 min04Legal and Judicial Terminology and Concepts
This domain asks you to understand the legal concepts that appear in testimony and argument, so that you can transcribe them correctly and recognize when a term is being misused. Candidates should know the structure of a civil and criminal case: pleadings, discovery, motions, pretrial, trial, verdict, judgment, appeal.
309 words, about 2 min05Medical and Technical Terminology
Court reporters encounter medical and technical testimony in personal-injury, workers' compensation, and malpractice cases. Candidates should know basic anatomy and body systems (musculoskeletal, neurological, cardiovascular), common injury terms (contusion, sprain, strain, fracture, herniation, radiculopathy), diagnostic procedures (MRI, CT, EMG, X-ray, ultrasound), treatment categories (conservative care, physical therapy, surgery, injection), and pharmacology basics (generic versus brand names, dosage, frequency).
254 words, about 1 min06Court Reporting Ethics and Professional Responsibility
This domain covers the ethical obligations of the reporter as an officer of the court. Candidates should understand impartiality, confidentiality, and the duty to produce a verbatim and accurate record.
278 words, about 1 min07Shorthand Machine Operation and Transcription Accuracy
This domain covers the practical mechanics of stenographic reporting. Candidates should understand the steno keyboard layout (number bar, initial and final consonant banks, vowel keys), how chords produce syllables, and how conflicts and homophones are resolved through briefs and dictionary entries.
266 words, about 1 min08Reading Comprehension and Proofreading
This domain measures your ability to read carefully and catch errors. Comprehension questions present a passage and ask for main idea, supporting detail, inference, tone, or the meaning of a word in context.
262 words, about 1 min