Clickable dictation at various speeds is available at the bottom of this page. The transcript of the dictation appears here as well.
Another timeless lesson from 1934. Every job, not just that of secretaries and stenographers, requires attention to detail.
Remember, the dictation pieces must be a minimum of three minutes to be a valid test. Anything here under three minutes is therefore not acceptable for testing purposes. Keep in mind that before Diamond Jubilee Gregg, all shorthand tests were five minutes. If you go back far enough, tests were ten minutes or longer.
Applied Secretarial Practice, The Gregg Publishing Company, 1934, p 354
Attention to Details
A secretary is, in the very nature of things, a person who deals with details. His life is just one detail after another. But perfection is made up of a host of details. The success of your work in the business field will, therefore, rest very largely upon your ability to handle details intelligently and thoroughly. Your employer will sketch roughly for you many instructions to be carried out. His mind conceives and deals with the larger aspects of business. It will be necessary for you to fill in the details.
Your success in carrying out such instructions will rest primarily in your ability to understand and absorb. Occasionally these instructions will not be clear. If you have imagination, you will be able to grasp their significance, even under these circumstances, but you should never leave to guesswork anything that can be reduced to exactitude. If instructions are not clear, discuss the obscure points. At first it will be of great assistance to you to note these in shorthand. It is much safer to follow the spoken word than to trust to memory. Memory may service you in filling in minor points, but the main ideas should be reduced to writing.
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Instructions for Self-Dictation Practice:
Copy and paste the above article into a word-processing document, using double or triple spacing and 12- or 14-pitch type.
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Dictation Practice:
Note that the material was counted and recorded for dictation at 100; all other speeds were copied from the 100 take and electronically adjusted and may therefore sound unusual.
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