> The Registered Skilled Reporter (RSR) is NCRA's new designation that will recognize those stenographic professionals who are looking to validate their beginning level of competency.
> You have to pass three five-minute Skills Tests (SKT), which evaluate your skills level in three areas: Literary at 160 wpm, Jury Charge at 180 wpm, Testimony/Q&A at 200 wpm.
https://www.ncra.org/certification/NCRA-Certifications/regis...
Note also that the speeds listed are described as beginning level. Contrast this with the speed contest(1) featuring literary (i.e., a speech or some kind of governmental literature or something to that effect) read at 200-220 WPM, jury charge (instructions) read at 200-260 WPM, and Q&A ([witness] testimony) read at 280 WPM.
These are the kind of speeds that have been typical of stenographers pretty much as long as it's been a thing, even when it was done with a pen rather than a steno machine -- well, back into the 19th century at least; I personally can't speak to the performance of the earlier shorthand systems off the top of my head.
Those "beginning" speeds are about at the top of what most of the best longhand typists can do at any serious length (see, for example, hi-games.net typing leaderboard for a 5-minute(2) vs 10-second(3) test).
As to the WPM cutoff to be considered a "typist"? I mean, it's not like it's a professional credential or anything. Anyone can be a typist if they're typing, I suppose, or if they choose to take it seriously enough. Even the de facto standards of job requirements are nothing much to go by: The typing speeds listed as required in the job postings for nearly all customer service, tech support, general office, and other such jobs, quite frankly, range from underwhelming to laughable. Even transcriptionists (longhand, as in not steno, and offline, as in not real-time) don't need to type more than about 80 WPM to find work in the field, if even that much. In my view, 80 WPM is still an awfully tedious sort of speed, but I understand it's more commonly considered a respectable one, and more than adequate for most tasks, so I guess I'd be fine with that number if I had to pick one.
I'll also throw in with jb-wells above and say that anyone who's touch-typing (and preferably making progress into the triple digits, or so far as their own ability will allow) might as well be considered a typist -- or anyone who managed to convince someone to pay them to type things at any speed.
1. https://www.ncra.org/home/the-profession/Awards-and-contests...