About Margie

Margie Wakeman Wells has a BA from the University of California Santa Barbara; did graduate work in education and linguistics at UCLA; and is certified as a CRI, Court Reporting Instructor. She holds a life teaching credential from the State of California and is in her seventh decade of a teaching career that includes high school Spanish; Peace Corps training; community work with Spanish-speaking women and senior citizens; and, since 1976, court reporting.

Margie has taught speedbuilding from theory to the exit speeds and everything in between and has helped design programs, write theory, and develop curriculum. Her love of English led her to develop and teach classes on grammar, punctuation, spelling, word pairs, proofreading, and transcript production.

After a 30-year career at a bricks-and-mortar school in Los Angeles, ten concurrent years as a proofreader, and nine years as a consultant/teacher for a reporting school in the Midwest, Margie founded Margie Holds Court in 2013. Along with her operations manager—her brother, John—she runs the online school; teaches live online classes; answers daily questions for her popular subscription site, Margie’s Gurus; and authors a popular blog on All Things English. 

Under the auspices of NCRA and various state and local reporting organizations, Margie has provided answers to the question “What do I do with this crazy, convoluted English in my transcript?” in over 300 seminars for reporters. In addition, she has shared her knowledge and ideas in teacher and student seminars.

Her definitive work on punctuating the transcript, Bad Grammar/Good Punctuation, with the accompanying Workbook has become the bible for court reporters across the country as well as the go-to text for many reporting programs. Her other publications include Word P̶a̶r̶e̶s̶, P̶e̶a̶r̶s̶, Pairs; All Things English; and her latest book due out in the spring of 2024, Good Grammar.

Margie has two grown sons and lives with her husband Bill in Los Angeles, California.