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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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.
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