I saw some videos and still can’t understand, a lady just type like 5 buttons ans a whole phrase comes out on the screen. Also doesnt make sense at all what I see from the stenographer screen, it is like random letters no in the same line.
EDIT: Im impressed by how complex and interesting stenography is! Thank you for the replies and also thank you very much for the Awards! 🙂
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I saw a video the other day about this. As others have said, they have a keyboard that looks kind of like a piano. there are 3 sections, with like 10 keys each, and they combine to form difefent base letters. Those letters are then decoded into the actual word. The person giving the example was a student but was about 85% (or better) proficient. said that they are still around because they are actually better at recording than audio recording. If there’s a cough/sneeze it could muffle whoever is talking, but the stenographer would be able to hear and correctly reply. Plus they have near instant readback, compared to other recording types.
Considered stenography as a job as my teacher was a stenographer.
They don’t have a QWERTY keyboard, she can type 200+ WORDS a minute that way. They also use a short hand, so she actually gets 50 to 100 phrases / a minute just typing. Then on top of that newer stenography uses computers with tons of programs and short keys.
It’s not allowed in court, but when she works in offices a speech to text program writes a file. Then after she compares her short hand and corrects and notates the speech to text making her life a breeze. Especially when people talk over each other.
When she use to work closed captioning live, she had a lot hot keys and a couple minutes delay / grace period that she could fall behind in and a foot pedal to signal staff to take a brief pause / breath to buy her a couple of seconds.
You might also find Gregg Shorthand interesting to read/learn about. From what I can gather, it’s like the hand written version of stenography. I wouldn’t be surprised if one borrows from the other, they seem to be aimed at accomplishing the same goal. I always wanted to learn Gregg Shorthand, went as far as buying a book on it and everything… I did a few practice sheets and lost interest because it was so hard to get used to… I still think it’s cool af though.
It’s a form of shorthand, but on a machine. Court reporters don’t type, we write. We can write words, phrases, or sentences in one stroke. Which means we can press all the keys at the same time. We have the alphabet on both sides, meaning, we can type the alphabet with either hand. Left or right side.
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My mom is a court reporter. Stenographer keyboards [are not QWERTY](http://xahlee.info/kbd/i/stenotype_machine_2015-53567-s.jpg). There is a short-hand language they have developed. Certain combinations of letters make other letters. And the newer keyboards have macros for long names and common phrases (depending on what you program into the computer).
Former stenography student here.
Stenographers use a special machine called a stenotype machine that functions differently from a qwerty keyboard. On a qwerty keyboard, you type letters for words sequentially. On a steno machine, you type a bunch of letters simultaneously; one press of multiple buttons is called a “stroke”. Each stroke corresponds with a syllable. Two syllables, two strokes. Phonetic dictation.
Steno machines used to print out stenotype on a ribbon of receipt-like paper, and then after court adjourned, the stenographer (or an assistant called a scopist) would produce a proper English transcript from that. Some still do it that way (or just use the paper record as a back-up), but a lot of it is fully digital now. The machine saves a record of all strokes you make during a session, then later you hook it up to a computer with special software (which is stupidly expensive), and it dumps all those strokes into a word processor, which converts steno language gibberish like
PROS HOUM WNS SAU T DFD AT T STOR STPH
to
“PROSECUTOR: How many witnesses saw the defendant at the store?”
Between the stenographer and the software, there are all kinds of special tricks and shortcuts you can devise; a stenographer’s library of shortcuts is constantly growing to make things easier, kind of like a pro gamer coming up with new macros. For example, a really experienced stenographer might have a whole shortcut that lets them type “how many witnesses” in a single stroke. Or, for example, say a Defendant has some weird hard-to-spell name like “Pryzbylewski”; the stenographer will usually make a one-stroke macro for that before the trial even begins.
The reason for all this craziness is a need for speed. People talk fast as shit, and also double back, repeat themselves, stutter, etc. The stenographer has to capture all of it, because it’s all crucial to legal proceedings; a single misstated word at a key moment could be grounds for an appeal with someone’s life in the balance.
To be certified as a stenographer, you have to be able to pass a mock-dictation exam that requires you to transcribe 240 wpm at 95% accuracy for like 2 hours straight (or something like that; it’s been a while). Some reporters can go as high as 350 or so. Standard human conversation tends to fall around 180-200. All of which is incredibly difficult, if not outright impossible, on a normal keyboard.
It’s an incredibly difficult profession that requires years of training and practice. Like…the keys on a steno machine aren’t even labeled, and there aren’t even keys for every letter in the alphabet; half of the letters you type by typing combinations of multiple other letters. The first couple months of stenography training is just learning to read/memorize this bizarre language and get a handle on how the machine works. The rest is just drilling and speed-tests and drilling and speed-tests and drilling and speed-tests until you can pass the cert.
As a result, steno schools have a crazy high attrition rate (there’s a reason I dropped out…plateaued around 200wpm and couldn’t get past it). But, if you can make it, it’s pretty much guaranteed work anywhere in the country, and it tends to pay pretty well. Especially for quick turnaround of transcripts.
I compare it to learning to play a really complicated instrument. And then you have to use that instrument to play jazz with multiple other musicians, to a song you’ve never heard before, with tempo that changes constantly, in front of an audience, for hours at a time.
Stenography is a method of shorthand writing, where commonly used words are condensed into their own symbols or symbol combinations, and uncommon words are spelled out phonetically to reduce the number of needed letters.
For example “cat” is typed out KAT and can be typed using a single sweeping motion of two fingers and the thumb.
Some common shorthand abbreviations are “mn” for machine or “shand” for shorthand
So, a stegograph might read something like:
T . H . . . . .
. . . . EU . . . S .
. . A . . . PB . . .
. KP A . . P L . .
. . . . . P L . . . .
TH – This
EUS – is
APB – an
KPAPLPL – example (broken up into two chords)
The spaces on the form are created because the keys strike the paper at set locations.
Because each of those lines indicates a single simultaneous press of multiple buttons, a stenographer can reach typing speeds of up to 300 words per minute, with the world record being about 375.
A stenographer have to be able to type over 225 words a minute. This is very hard with a normal keyboard so they have to use a stenotype. This is much harder to learn to write on and read (unless you have computers to translate) but when you can use it there is no need to move your fingers around so it is much faster. The concept is that instead of pushing one button at a time you press a combination of buttons. Just like a piano player may push multiple buttons to form a chord. This means you need fewer buttons to type the same information. You are even able to write down more information then with a standard keyboard as a stenographer is often typing the exact sound. Each chord of a stenotype is a complete syllable which means that most words can be expressed using only one or two presses of the buttons. The way a stenotype outputs its text is also a way to speed it up. Typewriters had issues with speed becasuse each type is striking in the exact same spot on the paper. This made it physically impossible to type fast as it would mean two types were in the same place in time and space. But the stenotype solved this by having the types strike the paper in their own spot and just fed out more paper for every chord. So you end up with a strip of paper with seamingly random character scattered all over it. But each line is a sperate syllable and the character (and possition) describes this syllable to anyone who can read it.
My mom describes it like playing the piano. Unlike qwerty, where you’re keying individual letters at a time, a stenomachine can generate entire words and even phrases with a few keys pressed simultaneously. When you watch a stenographer, it’s like they’re playing chords, their fingers aren’t tagging buttons individually.
I do know my mom has roughly 80,000 combinations from only 24 keys (two of which are ‘s’, mind you.) She averages 250 wpm. The average english speaker talks at about 160 wpm, but you need to be faster because you’ll have overlap in dialogue when multiple people speak.
She can program phrases and words and names that she knows will come up often. She volunteers to key for deaf people in church, so there are some things that are just repeated throughout the sermon that she has pre-programed I guess.
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