If court stenographers type so efficiently, why hasn’t that become a more standard way of typing?
In: Other
Basically, regular typing is something most people can learn and get used to pretty quickly. Steno, however, is much more of a “life’s work” thing. You can try it out and see why: [http://www.openstenoproject.org/demo/](http://www.openstenoproject.org/demo/)
The essence is that it’s based on “chorded typing” – where instead of pressing a single key for a single letter, you press multiple keys at once and type a whole word. But you don’t press _all_ the letters of the word; instead, you press a combination of letters that represent the word in shorthand – or for longer words it might require several combinations. Classically steno typewriters could only output the shorthand, so you’d get output of single letters in columns that the reporter would have to decode after the session; to actually see the words typed out as you go, you need a computer as well to perform the shorthand substitution.
And that’s the thing. For regular typing you can just learn to type each letter. For steno, you have to learn each _word_. So if you need to type “the inebriated underclassman exhaled”, you can’t just use the keys you already know; you have to know those chords ( T EUPB PWRAOEUT D UPBD *ER KHAS PHAPB KPAEUL ED, you’re welcome ). So yes, you can type that whole sentence in 10 keystrokes, but you have to practice like crazy to do it.
Latest Answers