- What the Eight Domain Lines Really Are
- The Five Written Knowledge Test Subjects
- The Three Dictation-Skills Components
- Weights, Question Counts and Timing: What Is and Isn't Verified
- Domains Side by Side
- Registration, Fees and Eligibility Mechanics
- Sequencing Your Preparation by Domain
- Keeping the Credential After You Pass
- Frequently Asked Questions
- The "eight domains" are five unweighted Written Knowledge Test subjects plus three separate dictation-skills components.
- The WKT requires a score of at least 70; no current percentage weighting per subject is verified.
- Each skills segment is five minutes of dictation, passed at 95% accuracy: 180, 200 and 225 words per minute.
- Certification testing is administered by the National Verbatim Reporters Association (NVRA), not by Zeffy, which only handles registration.
What the Eight Domain Lines Really Are
Searching for a "CVR exam blueprint" tends to produce tidy eight-row tables with percentages next to each row. For the Certified Verbatim Reporter credential offered through the National Verbatim Reporters Association (NVRA), that picture would be misleading. The eight lines in this guide are not eight equally structured exam domains. They are the five subjects of the Written Knowledge Test (WKT) published on the NVRA certifications page, plus the three separate dictation-skills components a voice-writing candidate must pass.
That distinction matters for how you study. The first five lines are knowledge subjects tested in a written exam. The last three are performance tasks: you dictate, you transcribe, and your accuracy is measured against a threshold. They call for entirely different kinds of preparation. If you want the broader context on what the credential is before diving in, start with What Is CVR Certification?, and if you are weighing the difficulty of the two halves, see How Hard Is the CVR Exam?
The Five Written Knowledge Test Subjects
The WKT requires a score of at least 70. The five published subjects are listed below. They are public examination subjects, not a verified weighted blueprint, so treat them as a map of topics rather than a promise about how many questions each will contribute.
Domain 1: Reporting the Verbatim Record
This is the heart of the profession: capturing spoken proceedings accurately and completely. For a voice writer, it covers what happens in the room while the record is being made.
- Capturing speech faithfully, including how to handle interruptions, overlapping speakers and unclear audio
- Knowing when and how to ask for clarification so the record stays accurate
- Understanding what "verbatim" means in practice versus cleaned-up paraphrase
- Equipment and method considerations specific to voice-based reporting
Domain 2: Transcript Production Including Vocabulary and Punctuation
Turning the captured record into a finished transcript. The line explicitly names vocabulary and punctuation, so expect language-skills content alongside production procedure.
- Punctuation conventions that change the meaning of testimony, such as comma placement, dashes for interrupted speech and quotation handling
- Legal, medical and general vocabulary and the spelling of terms that sound alike
- Formatting conventions for question-and-answer and colloquy sections
- Proofreading habits that catch errors a spell-checker will not
Domain 3: Transcript Distribution
Once a transcript exists, it has to reach the right people in the right way. This subject concerns the handling of finished work product.
- Who is entitled to copies and how delivery is handled
- Confidentiality and sealed material in the distribution process
- Timeliness expectations and record-keeping around delivery
Domain 4: Professional Responsibilities
The day-to-day obligations of a reporter acting as an officer of the proceeding rather than a participant in it.
- Impartiality and the reporter's neutral role
- Maintaining notes, audio and files appropriately
- Working relationships with attorneys, judges, witnesses and clients
- Obligations tied to maintaining certification and NVRA membership
Domain 5: Ethics
Listed separately from professional responsibilities, ethics is where scenario-style reasoning is most likely to matter: what to do when a situation puts accuracy, neutrality or confidentiality under pressure.
- Conflicts of interest and disclosure
- Pressure to alter, omit or "improve" the record
- Confidentiality boundaries and appropriate responses to improper requests
Domains 4 and 5 are easy to blur together, so study them as a pair but be able to explain how they differ: professional responsibilities describe what the job requires, while ethics governs how to act when the right course is contested or uncomfortable.
The Three Dictation-Skills Components
The skills assessment is where voice-writing candidates separate themselves. It requires dictation and transcription of three five-minute segments, and each must be passed at 95% accuracy. The speed rises with each segment.
Domain 6: Literary
Five minutes of literary material dictated at 180 words per minute, with a 95% accuracy requirement.
- Continuous prose with varied sentence length and richer vocabulary than everyday speech
- Punctuation judgment where there is no question-and-answer structure to lean on
- The slowest of the three speeds, but the most unfamiliar rhythm for many reporters
Domain 7: Jury Charge
Five minutes at 200 words per minute, again at 95% accuracy.
- Formal legal instruction language with long, structured sentences
- Recurring legal phrasing and terminology that rewards a well-built personal dictionary
- Sustained delivery where a single stumble can cascade into errors
Domain 8: Two-Voice Question and Answer
Five minutes at 225 words per minute, at 95% accuracy, with two speakers.
- The fastest segment, and the closest simulation of live testimony
- Rapid speaker changes that demand clear speaker identification
- Question-and-answer formatting that must stay consistent under speed
For a closer look at how the accuracy thresholds translate into error budgets, see CVR Passing Score 2026.
Weights, Question Counts and Timing: What Is and Isn't Verified
This is the section most competing articles gloss over, so it deserves care. Three things cannot be stated with confidence from current published sources.
- Percentage weights per domain. No current percentage weighting for the five WKT subjects has been verified.
- The exact question count. NVRA's Facts and Figures comparison page labels the CVR WKT as "100+ questions," but an exact current count could not be verified.
- The written-exam time limit. No current timed-test specification is supplied.
There is also a historical document worth knowing about, with the right caveats attached. An NVRA policy manual revised February 22, 2023, available as a public text reprint hosted by a third party, described a 100-question, two-hour WKT split into three weighted areas: reporting the verbatim record at 45%, transcript production at 45%, and professional responsibilities at 10%. That is a historical document. It does not verify that the count, timing or three-part weighting remain current, and those percentages should not be mapped onto the five current subject lines above. Using them as study-time allocations is reasonable as a rough prior, but do not treat them as current exam facts.
Separately, the Test Schedule and Registration page links a policies and procedures PDF revised August 28, 2026. That document could not be retrieved for this guide, so its contents are not assumed here. If you are testing in the near term, read it yourself; it is the authoritative source for rules this article deliberately declines to guess at.
Key Takeaway
Plan around the verified numbers (a WKT score of at least 70, and 95% accuracy at 180, 200 and 225 words per minute) and treat everything else about format as something to confirm with NVRA before your test date.
For more on what the data does and doesn't show about outcomes, see CVR Pass Rate 2026: What the Data Shows.
Domains Side by Side
| # | Line | Part of Exam | Verified Standard | Skill Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Reporting the verbatim record | Written Knowledge Test | WKT score of at least 70 overall | Knowledge |
| 2 | Transcript production, including vocabulary and punctuation | Written Knowledge Test | WKT score of at least 70 overall | Knowledge and language |
| 3 | Transcript distribution | Written Knowledge Test | WKT score of at least 70 overall | Knowledge |
| 4 | Professional responsibilities | Written Knowledge Test | WKT score of at least 70 overall | Knowledge |
| 5 | Ethics | Written Knowledge Test | WKT score of at least 70 overall | Judgment and scenarios |
| 6 | Literary | Skills assessment | Five-minute segment, 180 wpm, 95% accuracy | Performance |
| 7 | Jury charge | Skills assessment | Five-minute segment, 200 wpm, 95% accuracy | Performance |
| 8 | Two-voice question and answer | Skills assessment | Five-minute segment, 225 wpm, 95% accuracy | Performance |
Notice that the WKT score is a single overall threshold, not a per-subject pass mark. A shortfall in one subject can in principle be offset elsewhere, but without published weights you cannot know how much any one subject is worth. That uncertainty argues for even coverage rather than betting on a favorite domain. The skills segments, by contrast, are each judged on their own 95% line.
Registration, Fees and Eligibility Mechanics
Who Runs What
NVRA administers certification testing. Its current schedule lists in-person CVR events, and Zeffy appears as the registration infrastructure for those events, not as the examination provider. When you register through a Zeffy page, you are still testing with NVRA.
Published Event Pricing
The issuer-linked November 2026 Nashville registration lists the following charges for eligible member candidates:
| Item | Listed Price |
|---|---|
| In-person Written Knowledge Test | USD160 |
| Skills segments (up to three) | USD185 |
| Optional Test Readiness Session | USD125 |
These are event-specific published charges, not a nonmember fee tier and not a guaranteed nationwide future schedule. Other events may price differently. Membership is a separate cost: current listings show USD225 for new General membership, USD200 for General renewal and USD75 for Student membership. For the full cost picture, see CVR Certification Cost 2026.
Eligibility
Candidates need documentary proof of one of the following: high-school graduation, a GED, an independently administered examination approved by the U.S. Secretary of Education, or a higher-education degree. They also need NVRA membership in good standing, in the General, Military, Student or Honorary category. The full breakdown lives in CVR Requirements 2026, and scheduling specifics are covered in CVR Exam Dates 2026.
Sequencing Your Preparation by Domain
Because the eight lines split cleanly into knowledge and performance, the most useful scheduling principle is to run them in parallel rather than one after the other. Dictation speed is built through daily repetition and decays quickly when neglected, while the WKT subjects can be studied in focused blocks. A broader plan is laid out in the CVR Study Guide; here is how the domains map onto weeks.
Foundation: Domains 1 and 2, plus daily literary dictation
- Work through reporting the verbatim record and transcript production first, since they carry the most substance and, in the historical 2023 manual, the largest shares
- Drill punctuation and vocabulary that alter meaning in testimony
- Start Domain 6 literary dictation at 180 wpm daily so speed work begins early
Procedure and conduct: Domains 3, 4 and 5, plus jury charge
- Cover transcript distribution, then professional responsibilities and ethics as a linked pair
- Practice explaining the difference between a responsibility and an ethical dilemma in your own words
- Add Domain 7 jury charge at 200 wpm and begin building a personal dictionary of recurring legal phrasing
Speed and integration: Domain 8 and full runs
- Introduce two-voice question and answer at 225 wpm, with deliberate speaker-identification practice
- Run full five-minute segments and measure accuracy against the 95% line rather than judging by feel
- Revisit the weakest WKT subject and take timed written practice, treating any practice questions as original practice rather than recalled exam content
NVRA's Practice Material Store lists official retired dictation tests and a study guide for the CVR written test. The paid contents were not reviewed for this article, but retired dictation tests are a natural fit for the skills weeks above. You can also use the CVR practice test site for original written-style practice, and a quick-reference version of the key numbers is in the CVR Cheat Sheet.
Key Takeaway
Start the slowest dictation segment in week one. Knowledge subjects respond to focused study blocks, but the 225 wpm question-and-answer segment rewards months of consistent daily practice, so the earlier you start speed work, the better.
Keeping the Credential After You Pass
Passing is not the end of the domain story, because the credential carries ongoing obligations. Retaining CVR requires continuous NVRA membership and 20 continuing-education credits per two-year cycle. The published current cycle runs January 1, 2025 through December 31, 2026. If membership lapses, certification is revoked and retesting is required to regain it. The Continuing Education Handbook and Forms page on the NVRA site is the place to confirm how credits are earned and documented.
On the earnings side, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median annual pay of USD72,420 in May 2025 for court reporters and simultaneous captioners. That is an occupational benchmark covering the whole field, not CVR-only earnings and not proof that the certification itself commands a premium. For a fuller treatment, see CVR Salary Guide 2026, Is the CVR Certification Worth It? and CVR Jobs.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Domains 1 through 5 are the Written Knowledge Test subjects, while Domains 6 through 8 are three separate dictation-skills components: literary, jury charge and two-voice question and answer. The count of eight simply tallies the published lines.
A score of at least 70 is required. No current per-subject percentage weighting has been verified, so there is no published formula for how each of the five subjects contributes to that score.
You dictate and transcribe three five-minute segments, each passed at 95% accuracy: literary at 180 words per minute, jury charge at 200, and two-voice question and answer at 225.
They come from a historical NVRA policy manual revised February 22, 2023, which described a 100-question, two-hour test. That document does not verify that those figures are current, and the weights should not be assigned to the five current subject lines.
A passing WKT remains valid for three years as long as your NVRA membership stays continuous. Once certified, you must maintain membership and complete 20 continuing-education credits per two-year cycle, or the certification is revoked.
For definitions and background, you can also read What Is CVR? and CVR Training, then return to the main practice test to put the written-subject material to work.