A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

Okay, please help me to understand.... - ??

Posted: Sep 15, 2010

Everyone says with VR you can double your line count. I want to know what was their line count typing? On my account, I can type anywhere from 250 to 300 lines in an hour. I've been doing VR now for almost 2 months. I'm editing around 300 lines in an hour, however, I'm being paid 50% less. I was told I would not have to work MORE hours to make the same, but would work the SAME hours and make more. I have an extensive autocorrect and use it a lot. I'm finding that many of the drafts I get I have to fix so much, I should just retype the whole thing! It's such a waste of time to sit there and pick through a document, fixing every little comma, missing period, missing the or a.

I would really like to know if you guys would please post how long it took you to increase your line counts with VR and what your line counts typing and editing are. What is a good line count for an MT to edit in an hour on average? How much did your pay increase, as now you're making something like 4 or 5 cpl?

In my experience, high typing producers may not have the same - Skilled Editor

[ In Reply To ..]
potential for doubling right off that slower people do. Or at least sometimes don't. I was a slowish typist, so editing shifted some focus off that to things I did better than average and my line count leaped.

The same goes for people who are already using an expander extensively on moving to SR or just an upgraded platform. My new platform does a lot of things faster that the old one did not, with increased lines to offset the pay cut that came with it--but not so much for me because I'd made many macros to speed up the old platform already. There, I'm in your boat.

It's unfortunate that relatively unenterprising people can benefit more than people who make themselves high producers, but that's the way the ball bounces.

You did mention using Auto Correct. No doubt you don't want to change, but I'm guessing you could probably build up a nice speed increase by even more use of a professional-level expander.

In the meantime, it does sound as if you are going a lot slower than you should. You should certainly see SOME significant increase in lines. How about setting yourself a goal of 15% increase in speed over this next week? That'll give you a reachable goal and require you to focus on HOW to get faster.

If you have so many corrections in your drafts, you might try the slash-and-burn style I resort to for significantly bad text. Forget the bunny hop from error to error. Make macros that erase: an entire line (start with Home key so position of cursor doesn't matter), to end of line, to beginning of line, bottom of paragraph, and to the next period. Have short forms for all the common words and phrases your usual dictators use so that in more cases than not you can replace the wiped text very quickly with stored phrases. Good luck

What? - aa

[ In Reply To ..]
Did anybody get that?

Sorry, aa. Do you maybe have one part - Skilled Editor

[ In Reply To ..]
I could readdress? I'm not up to redoing the whole thing. :)

Skilled editor: Where can I learn to make - Frustrated s/m

[ In Reply To ..]
the macros that you talked about in your last paragraph? You have given a lot of good tips. I use Shorthand as my expander and I know there are a lot of things I can do with it, but I need a trainer. I do not do well with just reading, I need a hands on approach, I actually have to do it to understand it.

Hi, Frustrated. You'll get unfrustrated faster than - Skilled Editor

[ In Reply To ..]
you think. I'm not a tech-savvy person, so to me there are two kinds of macros: the ones I can make simply by using my expander to record my keystrokes AND the ones I don't know how to make and have to copy from someone kind enough to share.

Recording with SH is extremely easy once you've done it a couple of times. Like making oatmeal once you know where to find the oatmeal and a pan. I get an occasional quirk but just redo if that happens.

Say you want to make a macro to delete the entire line your cursor is on. The whole line's a mess. You'd

Open a SH add window (ALT+Insert)
Hit "Record" (on right side)
Then type the keystrokes you need:
1. Since your cursor might be anywhere on that line, hit the "Home" key to take the cursor to the left margin.
2. "Shift+End" will select the line, right? So do that.
3. Now, to make sure you don't pick up a code you don't want to delete, do one left arrow.
4. Hit the "Delete" key.
5. Tell it to stop recording.
6. I don't remember if I actually needed to in this case, but I finished this macro the same way almost all others, by entering a "No space" command. If you look down toward the bottom left of the add screen, you see a "Tags" button. "No Space" is a choice under there. (SH auto adds a space after the words it expands so we don't have to, so we have to turn it off when it might cause mess things up.)
7. Give it a really short name to use fast. Maybe one letter struck twice.

If you make a copy of that macro under a new name but remove the "Home" part, it'll only delete from your cursor to the right margin.

You can also paste macros into the window instead of recording. Here's a macro that toggles a letter from cap to non-cap and back. (Hope it works right on your system.)

{@NoSpace}{@KEY Shift+Right}{@KEY Ctrl+Alt+L}{@KEY Left}

You copy it, open the add window, paste it in the big white box, give it a name, maybe one letter or symbol because you'll use it often.

This next one caps or uncaps a whole word. Notice it's the same as the first one except it CTRL-rights to choose the whole word instead of just a letter. How about naming it the same letter as the first one, but hit twice?

{@KEY Shift+Ctrl+Right}{@KEY Ctrl+Alt+L}{@KEY Ctrl+Right}{@NOSPACE}

BTW, I have that one-letter cap-uncap toggle in a ton of longer macros. Like one that backs up, inserts a period, returns to the next word to cap the first letter, then jumps the cursor to the next word in the sentence (because I'm done back there.) I call that one ..

Have fun!

Thanks so much. Can you tell me the - one I can use to SM

[ In Reply To ..]
take out a period, insert a comma and uncapitalize the next word? I run into that constantly.

Is there a tutorial for all of this? Where did you learn how to do this?

Thanks.

SH has a help function, and that's where I started, - Skilled Editor

[ In Reply To ..]
but people at various sites chat about these things and share. Like right here. You didn't say my macros so far are working on your system, but hopefully they are. Sometimes background programming causes problems with just copying from someone else.

In any case, my macro for joining two sentences with a comma is: {@KEY Del},{@KEY Shift+Right}{@KEY Ctrl+Alt+C}. You activate it with the cursor at the period you're removing. I named mine ,,

Note what it contains:
1. Delete, for the period.
2. Shift+right arrow to jump to the first letter of the next word and select it.

(These two commands could be recorded from your keystrokes, or copied from a macro you already have, or ***entered in the white Text to Type box by hitting Control+K, then hitting the command key. You'd do this Control+K thing twice, once for the Delete command, once for the Shift+right arrow.)

3. {@KEY Ctrl+Alt+C} Recognize this? It's the macro someone gave me for toggling caps on and off.

If you would also like to make a macro to create 2 sentences from one, you can copy #3 into that new macro to change the letter to lower case (it's a toggle so it works both directions). I actually have two of those macros:

1. For text with a punctuation mark to delete, which works with the cursor placed at that comma, question mark, or whatever.
2. For text with no punctuation mark to delete, beginning with the cursor at the beginning of the first word of the new sentence.

Give it a try and see how it goes.

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