UPMSP Shorthand & Typewriting common mistakes
UPMSP Shorthand & Typewriting · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing shorthand outlines with the pen lifted between strokes instead of keeping the pen on paper through the whole word, producing broken, disconnected outlines that cannot be read back during transcription.
Candidates learn outlines letter-by-letter from a chart and practise them in isolation, so the muscle habit of continuous writing is never formed; under dictation speed the pen lifts multiply and the outline collapses.
What to do instead
Drill every new outline as a single continuous stroke from the first day, writing each word ten times without lifting the pen. Practise joining families of words (e.g. words ending in the same final hook) in a running line rather than in a vertical list, and time yourself writing a full sentence of known outlines with no pen-lifts.
Transcribing from shorthand notes by reading word-by-word and pausing to puzzle out each outline, instead of reading the whole phrase ahead and writing the longhand in chunks.
Weak outlines force conscious decoding, and candidates never practise the separate skill of phrasing while reading back, so transcription time is consumed by hesitation rather than writing.
What to do instead
Practise read-back as its own exercise: take a passage of shorthand you wrote yesterday and read it aloud in phrases without writing longhand. Then transcribe in timed chunks of 8-10 words, glancing ahead before starting to write. Build a personal list of outlines you had to stop on and re-drill only those.
Chasing the dictator's speed by abbreviating outlines ad hoc mid-passage, inventing personal contractions on the fly that are unreadable an hour later.
Panic at a fast dictation pushes candidates to improvise rather than fall back on known short forms, and the improvised strokes have no consistent meaning attached.
What to do instead
Fix a small, memorised set of standard short forms and phrases before increasing speed, and commit to writing only those under pressure. When you miss a word, leave a blank space and keep moving rather than inventing a stroke. Review every ad hoc abbreviation after each passage and either adopt it formally into your list or discard it.
Typing at top speed from the first minute of a timed test, accumulating errors that take longer to correct than the speed gained, and using the backspace or correction key repeatedly.
Candidates equate speed with gross words per minute and never measure net speed, so they do not feel the cost of errors; the habit is reinforced by untimed practice where corrections are free.
What to do instead
Calculate net speed after every practice run (gross words minus ten times the error count, divided by minutes) and track only that number. Practise at a pace where you can hold accuracy above 95 per cent, then raise speed in small increments. Train yourself to type through a wrong word and correct only at the end of the line or passage.
Ignoring the prescribed typing layout and formatting conventions, such as inconsistent margins, wrong line spacing, missing headings, or misaligned tabulated matter, so a technically fast typescript is marked down.
Practice is done on plain paragraphs with no formatting rules, and candidates never study the layout conventions the examiner applies to letters, tabulations and headings.
What to do instead
Obtain the official layout conventions for the examination and practise them as a fixed routine: set margins first, type the heading in the prescribed position, use the tabulator for columns rather than repeated spaces, and check vertical alignment of figures. Do at least one full formatted exercise (a letter and a tabular statement) in every practice session.
Making systematic Hindi spelling errors in matras, especially between similar vowel signs and in halant and anusvara placement, and mis-typing conjunct consonants on the keyboard.
Candidates learn the keyboard by touch but never revise Hindi orthography, and the shorthand outline may be correct while the longhand expansion is misspelt; conjunct clusters are slow to locate on the layout.
What to do instead
Maintain an error log of every misspelt word from transcription practice and revise the underlying spelling rule for each. Drill the conjunct and matra key positions in isolation for five minutes daily, and read back transcribed Hindi aloud to catch errors the eye skips.
Losing marks on grammar and sentence construction in the language paper: wrong agreement, incorrect case or postposition use, and direct translation of English idiom into Hindi or vice versa.
Candidates treat the language component as general knowledge and do not practise composition under exam conditions, so errors of agreement and idiom surface only in the hall.
What to do instead
Work through graded grammar exercises on agreement, case and postpositions, then apply them in short timed compositions (a letter, a précis, a paragraph) marked against a model answer. Keep a list of correct idiomatic collocations in both languages and use each in a written sentence.
Answering general knowledge and current affairs questions from stale memory, relying on facts learned months earlier without checking dates, office-holders or recent schemes.
Candidates prepare current affairs in a single burst early in preparation and do not revise, so names of office-holders, award winners and newly launched schemes are out of date at the exam.
What to do instead
Keep a rolling one-page monthly digest of appointments, awards, schemes and sports results, and revise the last six months weekly. For static facts (constitutional articles, capitals, currencies), use a fixed checklist and self-test rather than re-reading. Verify any uncertain fact before committing it to memory.
Practising dictation only at a comfortable speed and never at or above the examination speed, so the candidate has no experience of writing while behind the dictator.
Comfortable practice feels productive and keeps error counts low, but it never trains the recovery skill of continuing after a missed phrase, which is what the real test demands.
What to do instead
Devote part of every session to dictation 10-20 words per minute above your target, accepting a lower accuracy, and practise deliberately leaving a gap and rejoining at the next phrase. Record passages and dictate them to yourself so you control speed and can repeat difficult sections.
Skipping the final proofreading pass on the typescript or transcript, submitting with uncorrected typographical errors, omitted words and wrong figures.
Time pressure at the end of the paper makes candidates hand in immediately, and they have never practised rapid systematic checking, so they read what they meant to type rather than what is on the page.
What to do instead
Reserve the last few minutes of every practice test for proofreading and rehearse a fixed checklist: compare figures and proper nouns against the source, check the first and last word of each line, verify totals in tabulations. Practise reading the typescript backwards word by word to break the expectation effect.