Mark Kislingbury’s 370 WPM ‘Guinness Record’ That Wasn’t: How a Historic Steno Feat Went Unratified

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For decades, the stenographic world has measured excellence by one global yardstick: the Guinness World Record. And for two decades, one name has held that title — Mark Kislingbury, whose 360 words-per-minute (WPM) take with 97.23% accuracy at the NCRA 2004 summer convention in Chicago remains officially recognized as the fastest ever recorded.

But in 2022, during the “Fearless Stenographers” event hosted as part of Steno in the City™, Mark reportedly did something extraordinary: he wrote 370 WPM with approximately 95.4% accuracy. The stenographic community celebrated the moment as if history had been rewritten. It was shared, quoted, and repeated: Mark had broken his own world record.

And yet, three years later, Guinness World Records still lists the 360 WPM take from 2004 as the official record.

This gap between public narrative and official record isn’t just a paperwork issue — it’s a revealing case study in professionalism, perception, and misplaced loyalty.

What Is Documented

The key facts are straightforward:

  • Guinness World Records currently lists Mark’s 360 WPM, 97.23% accuracy performance from the NCRA 2004 Chicago convention as the standing record.
  • Mark’s biography and community discussions widely reference the 370 WPM test from 2022 as a new milestone.
  • The event was hosted under the banner of Steno in the City™ during the “Fearless Stenographers” gathering in Houston.
  • The 370 WPM take was scored at approximately 95.4% accuracy and publicized as a Guinness-breaking performance.
  • Despite this, no update ever appeared on the official Guinness site.

The result is a strange situation: a performance celebrated as world-changing — but never officially recognized.

How Guinness Ratification Actually Works

Breaking a Guinness record isn’t just about performance — it’s about process. Ratification requires:

  1. A formal application for the record category;
  2. On-site adjudication or strict adherence to Guinness’s independent verification protocols;
  3. Submission of complete evidence: high-quality video, certified accuracy scores, qualified witness statements, logs, and documentation;
  4. A review and ratification period, during which Guinness verifies compliance before updating the official listing.

Any gap in that process — missing forms, unqualified witnesses, insufficient video evidence, or simply failing to submit — can cause the attempt to be rejected or abandoned. Guinness does not scour the internet for records; the burden is entirely on the organizer.

What Might Have Happened with the 370 WPM Attempt

There’s no public statement from Guinness or Steno in the City™ explaining the missing ratification. Based on standard procedure, several possibilities exist:

  • The evidence was never formally submitted to Guinness;
  • The submission was incomplete or non-compliant;
  • The 95.4% accuracy may not have met Guinness’s threshold for that category;
  • Or the process was initiated but stalled or abandoned.

Whatever the cause, the bottom line is the same: the 370 WPM record was never ratified.

But this isn’t just about an administrative failure. It shaped loyalties and reputations inside the profession.

When I spoke with Mark Kislingbury about Shaunise Day, he explained that he didn’t want to speak negatively about her because she had given him speaking opportunities and, crucially, because he believed he had set his Guinness World Record at her event. That belief naturally created a sense of gratitude and loyalty.

But that belief wasn’t true. No Guinness record was ever ratified from the 2022 Steno in the City™ event. What Mark understood as a defining professional milestone under her banner may, in fact, have exposed him to public embarrassment — a once-in-a-lifetime performance that went unrecognized because the event organizer didn’t follow through.

And this is where professionalism matters. Aligning yourself with someone who doesn’t operate with rigor and structure has consequences. When great talent partners with someone more focused on branding and selfies than on standards, their failures can become your fallout. Mark’s skill wasn’t the issue; the event’s lack of procedural integrity was.

Breaking News: Mark Still Believes the 370 WPM Record Is Official

As of early October 2025 – Friday, 10/3, in fact – Mark Kislingbury himself continues to publicly and privately refer to the 2022 Steno in the City™ event as the setting where he “broke the Guinness World Record.” In conversations this week, he reiterated that belief without hesitation.

This is what makes this article breaking news for the stenographic community: despite widespread claims, biographies, and event promotion materials, Guinness World Records has never ratified a 370 WPM record, and its official site still lists Mark’s 360 WPM performance from the 2004 NCRA Convention in Chicago as the standing record.

Mark is widely known in the community as one of the kindest, most gracious, and generous figures in stenography. I can personally attest to that. In my conversations with him, he has always been polite, humble, and genuinely encouraging — the kind of person who uplifts everyone around him. The situation described here is not of his making — it’s the result of organizational failure around him, not personal misconduct. He trusted that the event where he performed would handle the follow-through, and that trust was misplaced.

This makes the revelation all the more significant. One of the most celebrated “records” in modern steno history — referenced in speeches, marketing, and even professional alliances — does not actually exist in Guinness’s official archives. Mark himself appears to be unaware of that fact, making this the first public clarification of the gap between the claim and the official record.

Why This Matters to the Profession

Some may ask: Why does it matter whether Guinness ratified the 370 WPM record?

Because world records are more than numbers. They are symbolic touchstones — proof of the upper limits of human skill, rallying points for students, and powerful counters to the narrative that human stenographers have “hit their ceiling.”

An official record:

  • Inspires students, showing that the ceiling keeps rising;
  • Demonstrates to attorneys and judges that steno continues to advance;
  • Strengthens the profession’s public narrative, especially against AI and digital recording proponents;
  • Rewards talent with the recognition it deserves.

When the community celebrates something as official that isn’t, it creates confusion externally and damages credibility internally. It allows individuals to leverage the appearance of legitimacy — in this case, hosting a “Guinness-breaking event” — without delivering the actual substance.

Historical Perspective

When Mark set his original 360 WPM record in 2004, the event was hosted at an NCRA convention — an organization that understood Guinness’s procedural requirements. The record stood, unchallenged and officially documented, for two decades.

The 2022 attempt was hosted independently under Steno in the City™ — an event environment that emphasized branding, social media visibility, and hype, but apparently lacked the professional infrastructure to handle a Guinness submission. This is the contrast: institutional rigor vs. influencer optics. And the consequences were real.

What Could Happen Next

Theoretically, the 2022 performance could still be submitted for Guinness review if the evidence exists and meets the requirements. Alternatively, Mark—or another top reporter—could attempt to break the record again under conditions designed expressly for Guinness adjudication.

That would require meticulous planning, qualified witnesses, multiple cameras, and immediate post-event evidence submission — the kind of structured professionalism that was missing in 2022.

Setting the Record Straight

The unratified 370 WPM claim isn’t just a procedural footnote; it’s a cautionary tale. Mark Kislingbury remains, officially, the fastest stenographer in the world at 360 WPM. His reported 370 WPM performance is extraordinary — but until it’s ratified, it remains an unofficial milestone overshadowed by organizational failure.

For a profession built on precision, accuracy, and accountability, this is a wake-up call: extraordinary performances demand equally extraordinary professionalism behind the scenes.

The event’s leadership had one of the most historic stenographic performances of our time occur under their banner — and then failed to secure its place in the official record. That failure didn’t just cost Mark recognition; it misled the community, fueled false narratives, and damaged the credibility of the profession.

When you align with people who operate on hype instead of standards, their failures can become your legacy. Mark’s achievement deserved better. The community deserved better. The next world record attempt should ensure that history is not just made — but officially recorded.

For an organizer, hosting a world-record-breaking performance is a once-in-a-lifetime moment — the kind of achievement that should have been trumpeted through official press releases, mainstream media outreach, and formal submission to Guinness. Instead, the 2022 Steno in the City™ event produced no mainstream press release at all. This wasn’t a missed opportunity; it was professional negligence and organizational ineptitude at the highest level. A legitimate world-record performance should have been front-page news in legal and national media, yet it remained confined to insular trade blogs and promotional blurbs. The failure to formally announce and validate the record reflects a stunning lack of foresight, competence, and respect for the profession’s legacy. Here’s the limited scope of coverage of the accomplishment:

Articles & Recaps

  1. “The Fearless Stenographers Conference ’22 Recap” — the event’s own site, claims Mark set a new speed record of 370 WPM on the Steno in the City™ stage in Houston.
  2. “The Fearless Stenographers Conference RECAP!” — a recap on Stenovate describing how Mark “passed his take at a whopping 370 words per minute with 95.4% accuracy.”
  3. “Mark Kislingbury breaks own record” — The Journal of Court Reporting (JCR) article (Mar 2022) stating Mark “broke his own Guinness World Record … writing 370 words for one minute at 95.4% accuracy” during the Steno in the City’s Fearless Stenographers event.
  4. “Mark Kislingbury Academy of Court Reporting” — his academy’s site mentions he “beat that record by achieving 370 words per minute.” (Promotional / self-reporting).
  5. Reddit “Mark Kislingbury Apparently Broke His Own Speed Record” — a community thread referencing the 370 WPM claim.

*** As of 10/10/2025 – When contacted for clarification, Jacqueline Schmidt, editor of the Journal of Court Reporting, confirmed that the publication “worded carefully” around the issue after staff conversations with event organizers, noting that they were “waiting to hear if or when the new record was ever accepted by Guinness.” As of October 2025, no such confirmation has been made public.

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We exist to facilitate the fortifying of the Stenography profession and ensure its survival for the next hundred years! As court reporters, we've handed the relationship role with our customers, or attorneys, over to the agencies and their sales reps.  This has done a lot of damage to our industry.  It has taken away our ability to have those relationships, the ability to be humanized and valued.  We've become a replaceable commodity. Merely saying we are the “Gold Standard” tells them that we’re the best, but there are alternatives.  Who we are though, is much, much more powerful than that!  We are the Responsible Charge.  “Responsible Charge” means responsibility for the direction, control, supervision, and possession of stenographic & transcription work, as the case may be, to assure that the work product has been critically examined and evaluated for compliance with appropriate professional standards by a licensee in the profession, and by sealing and signing the documents, the professional stenographer accepts responsibility for the stenographic or transcription work, respectively, represented by the documents and that applicable stenographic and professional standards have been met.  This designation exists in other professions, such as engineering, land surveying, public water works, landscape architects, land surveyors, fire preventionists, geologists, architects, and more.  In the case of professional engineers, the engineering association adopted a Responsible Charge position statement that says, “A professional engineer is only considered to be in responsible charge of an engineering work if the professional engineer makes independent professional decisions regarding the engineering work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional engineer’s physical presence at the location where the engineering work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the engineering work.” If we were to adopt a Responsible Charge position statement for our industry, we could start with a draft that looks something like this: "A professional court reporter, or stenographer, is only considered to be in responsible charge of court reporting work if the professional court reporter makes independent professional decisions regarding the court reporting work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional court reporter’s physical presence at the location where the court reporting work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the court reporting work.” Shared purpose The cornerstone of a strategic narrative is a shared purpose. This shared purpose is the outcome that you and your customer are working toward together. It’s more than a value proposition of what you deliver to them. Or a mission of what you do for the world. It’s the journey that you are on with them. By having a shared purpose, the relationship shifts from consumer to co-creator. In court reporting, our mission is “to bring justice to every litigant in the U.S.”  That purpose is shared by all involved in the litigation process – judges, attorneys, everyone.  Who we are is the Responsible Charge.  How we do that is by Protecting the Record.

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