My stenography journey, entry 1
Mar. 2nd, 2024 01:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseThese will be tagged with "steno" for easy exclusion by readers.
For those curious, stenography is basically shorthand; machine stenography is the thing you see court reporters use in court proceedings (those strange typewriter-like machines they type into) and is used to caption live action TV using typed chords (multiple keys pressed at once) - a type of machine shorthand. I've dabbled with various shorthand things like Gregg Shorthand and others over the years (with not a lot of success as I just can't read my own handwriting), but for these entries, I'm talking about machine stenography. Believe it or not, there are hobbyist stenographers, and I'm (at least attempting to) join their ranks. (If you're curious, check out the Open Steno Project for more info.)
So, according to my research, stenography machines came into existence around the 1800s, but the layout used today was formalized in 1913 (so, around 111 years ago). Somewhere in the late 20th century, there were specialized software made to translate the signals from a stenography machine to a computer to produce readable text (before that, the text was transmitted onto paper tape).
Around 2010, a court reporter named Mirabai Knight wanted to get more people into machine stenography, but that was prohibitive: in order to learn, you had to rent or buy an expensive stenography machine (they cost thousands), along with software (which was a yearly subscription), and go to an accredited stenography school. So she worked with a software developer to create the open source stenography software Plover to open up it up to more people. Plover works with professional stenography machines, hobbyist stenography keyboards, and even regular keyboards (albeit with special mappings that don't correspond to the letters on the keyboard).
Now, there are a bunch of hobbyist stenographers, some of which have made the leap to live captioning or court reporting. (There are some hindrances to actually jumping from hobbyist steno to accredited positions - the biggest of which is that you have to own/rent the steno machine and go to school to get accredited, and stenography schools are scarce nowadays!) And there are a few vendors who support the hobbyist steno community in things like hobbyist keyboards - still not cheap but in the U.S. $100-300 range instead of thousands of dollars.
I have so far:
* Downloaded Plover onto two machines.
* Ordered a keyboard so I'm not distracted by the letters on a standard keyboard. Specifically, I've ordered a Stenokeyboards Polyglot. This can also serve as a 40% standard QWERTY keyboard in a pinch, but I'll mostly be using it for steno. Coming next week.
* Researched into machine stenography theories. Theories are kind of different 'dialects' for stenography - different theories have different ways of abbreviating/keying words on a machine. So, for example, one theory might have you press the "W" "A" and "T" keys together and another might have you press the "W" "A" "O" and "T" keys together for the same work.
* Decided to go with a theory named Lapwing. Lapwing is an offshoot of Plover's main theory (which is also called Plover), which is an offshoot of a commercial theory called StenEd. It is supposed to be simpler in some ways for beginners.
* Started using a guide for learning Lapwing theory, including a different site for practicing keystrokes. Even though it advises getting a specialized keyboard first I'm doing it on regular keyboards to get a head start.
Each side has a sequence of keys you have to memorize - both where the keys are and which order they go in general steno (which does not vary per theory).
So for example, I have them memorized as:
SKWR (bottom left keys) as "Shy Kay Writes Romances"
TPH (top left keys) as "To Please Homeworkers" (technically, I should have it memorized as "Simply To Please Homeworkers", but Lapwing substitutes the top "S" with the number key indicator)
RBGSZ (bottom right keys) as "Ruth Bader Ginsburg Sez"
FPLTD (top right keys) as "Friendly People Like To Dance"
AOEU (vowel keys) with the less intuitive "Blue (ao) European Union (eu)"
And then you have to memorize the general letter sequence, which also does not vary by theory:
STKPWHRAO*EUFRPBLGTSDZ
Which for me I'm trying to memorize as
"Science Treats Knowledge Pretty Wildly, Hoping Research Always Opens STARring Extraordinary Users From Random Places Beside Long Gazelles Through Serene Desert Zephyrs"
For those curious, stenography is basically shorthand; machine stenography is the thing you see court reporters use in court proceedings (those strange typewriter-like machines they type into) and is used to caption live action TV using typed chords (multiple keys pressed at once) - a type of machine shorthand. I've dabbled with various shorthand things like Gregg Shorthand and others over the years (with not a lot of success as I just can't read my own handwriting), but for these entries, I'm talking about machine stenography. Believe it or not, there are hobbyist stenographers, and I'm (at least attempting to) join their ranks. (If you're curious, check out the Open Steno Project for more info.)
So, according to my research, stenography machines came into existence around the 1800s, but the layout used today was formalized in 1913 (so, around 111 years ago). Somewhere in the late 20th century, there were specialized software made to translate the signals from a stenography machine to a computer to produce readable text (before that, the text was transmitted onto paper tape).
Around 2010, a court reporter named Mirabai Knight wanted to get more people into machine stenography, but that was prohibitive: in order to learn, you had to rent or buy an expensive stenography machine (they cost thousands), along with software (which was a yearly subscription), and go to an accredited stenography school. So she worked with a software developer to create the open source stenography software Plover to open up it up to more people. Plover works with professional stenography machines, hobbyist stenography keyboards, and even regular keyboards (albeit with special mappings that don't correspond to the letters on the keyboard).
Now, there are a bunch of hobbyist stenographers, some of which have made the leap to live captioning or court reporting. (There are some hindrances to actually jumping from hobbyist steno to accredited positions - the biggest of which is that you have to own/rent the steno machine and go to school to get accredited, and stenography schools are scarce nowadays!) And there are a few vendors who support the hobbyist steno community in things like hobbyist keyboards - still not cheap but in the U.S. $100-300 range instead of thousands of dollars.
I have so far:
* Downloaded Plover onto two machines.
* Ordered a keyboard so I'm not distracted by the letters on a standard keyboard. Specifically, I've ordered a Stenokeyboards Polyglot. This can also serve as a 40% standard QWERTY keyboard in a pinch, but I'll mostly be using it for steno. Coming next week.
* Researched into machine stenography theories. Theories are kind of different 'dialects' for stenography - different theories have different ways of abbreviating/keying words on a machine. So, for example, one theory might have you press the "W" "A" and "T" keys together and another might have you press the "W" "A" "O" and "T" keys together for the same work.
* Decided to go with a theory named Lapwing. Lapwing is an offshoot of Plover's main theory (which is also called Plover), which is an offshoot of a commercial theory called StenEd. It is supposed to be simpler in some ways for beginners.
* Started using a guide for learning Lapwing theory, including a different site for practicing keystrokes. Even though it advises getting a specialized keyboard first I'm doing it on regular keyboards to get a head start.
Each side has a sequence of keys you have to memorize - both where the keys are and which order they go in general steno (which does not vary per theory).
So for example, I have them memorized as:
SKWR (bottom left keys) as "Shy Kay Writes Romances"
TPH (top left keys) as "To Please Homeworkers" (technically, I should have it memorized as "Simply To Please Homeworkers", but Lapwing substitutes the top "S" with the number key indicator)
RBGSZ (bottom right keys) as "Ruth Bader Ginsburg Sez"
FPLTD (top right keys) as "Friendly People Like To Dance"
AOEU (vowel keys) with the less intuitive "Blue (ao) European Union (eu)"
And then you have to memorize the general letter sequence, which also does not vary by theory:
STKPWHRAO*EUFRPBLGTSDZ
Which for me I'm trying to memorize as
"Science Treats Knowledge Pretty Wildly, Hoping Research Always Opens STARring Extraordinary Users From Random Places Beside Long Gazelles Through Serene Desert Zephyrs"
