Stenography, in short, is the act of recording spoken words through shorthand using a stenotype machine. Search Court Reporter Programs Get information on Court Reporter programs by entering your zip code and request enrollment information. Depending on the language, a shorthand system may rely on symbols, which represent specific sounds, concepts, or letters, or it may rely on letters that have specific meanings. Some shorthand systems are even specially coded for a specific organization or company, thereby keeping sensitive information safe from outsiders.
Whatever stenography system is used, the ultimate goal is to record the spoken word verbatim. Stenography allows court reporters to record proceedings and events much quicker than they would be able to do using a standard keyboard. And, although handwritten stenography has been used for centuries, the use of a stenotype machine allows a court reporter to record information in a less laborious and more accurate manner. One of the first things people notice about a stenotype machine is that it lacks the number of keys of a standard keyboard.
On a normal keyboard, a typist hits individual keys to express individual letters as fast as possible to spell words. A stenographer, on the other hand, uses a steno machine to make "chords" by hitting multiple keys. Chords, much like the ones played on a piano, express sounds instead of letters and allow the stenographer to type at a slower rate to achieve the same word count, because those chords can express entire words and phrases. The result is about three times faster than traditional typing.
A stenography setup consists of a steno machine and steno software running on a computer. The software that is most commonly used by amateurs is Plover opens new window , which listens to what you do on the steno machine and then outputs keystrokes to whatever program you're using. Steno is completely different from traditional typing. Ordinary keyboards are very simple to use: you learn where the letters are, how to make things uppercase, and how to type symbols.
Getting faster is a matter of hand positioning and practice. Stenography takes months to learn and years to master. Let's look at some of the key concepts that make stenography special. The steno machine's compressed layout is used to form chords , which loosely correspond to syllables. Obviously, a steno machine looks very different from a normal keyboard.
There are so few keys no "N" key , repeated keys a "T" key on each side , and vowels at the bottom. Let's look at how this weird layout can be used to type really, really fast. If a stenographer wants to type "cat", they sound it out. Different key combinations create different "sounds", so they press down all of the following keys :. Because there are so few and repeated! For example, no word starts with the letters HR , so we can safely use the combination of keys HR to express a different sound.
HR is used to represent L by convention. To type a word starting with an "L" sound, the stenographer hits the keys HR. See if you can guess what word this is:. Upon release, the keys are read left-to-right to produce the syllable LAF which outputs the word "laugh".
A good example of where using the left or right half of the keyboard matters can be seen by comparing how we chord the word "start"….
If you're having trouble spotting the difference, it's simply pressing the R key that's on either side of the layout. The left R represents the R at the beginning of a syllable like in "rough" or "trap" and the right R represents the R at the end of a syllable like "car" or "tarp.
Because chords are roughly syllables, writing in stenography feels more like speaking than spelling. In steno, all these words with different spellings are chorded with the same right-side keys because they all end with a similar sound:.
Ever watched a professor save time by writing "w" instead of "with"? Have you ever written "brb" in a text chat instead of "be right back"? This concept is used extensively in stenography: a brief short for abbreviation is a shortcut to save time. In the time it takes us to type three individual letters, a stenographer can type an entire word with the help of a stenotype machine.
Because of this condensed form of typing, a stenotype keyboard has only 22 keys. This is opposed to normal computer keyboards, which have between 70 and keys. The stenotype can be so condensed because of the chord system — by combining keys you have hundreds of combinations to make different syllables quickly. Of course, typing in phonetic syllables does not create your typical English sentence — it does not even include spaces.
Older versions of the stenotype created lists of complex characters or punches in a paper that had to be interpreted later and written into an understandable English translation. Thanks to modern technology, stenotype machines can automatically compare the syllables written to a standard or custom dictionary and output the corresponding English.
The computer adds spaces and interprets words, and while not always perfect, gets better with each iteration of stenotype technology.
This is fairly simple: all court reporters are stenographers, but not all stenographers are court reporters. Stenographers can offer services as medical transcriptionists, realtime TV captioners, as well as in numerous accessibility fields think transcribing voice calls for deaf users.
These stenographer services are widely varied in difficulty and importance of accuracy. This type of machines is also used to produce captions for TV broadcasts, live streaming transcripts at meetings and at schools, and for office stenography in general.
Stenographs are working a bit like portable word processors, but they have a modified keyboard with 22 buttons instead of a standard keyboard. Now how do stenographers work? Court stenographers may be typing entire words if they strike more keys at the same time.
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