Stenography journey, entry 2
Mar. 3rd, 2024 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseEdit: Apparently this entry saved partially done but I didn't realize it and had duplicate entries for a while.
I've come to realize that there's a lot to explain about machine stenography!
So, the general idea of either kind of stenography - whether shorthand or machine-based - is that you sound out words phonetically and remove unneeded/duplicate characters. The word "Cat" becomes "kat" while the word "Well" becomes "wel". For machine stenography, this also means sometimes splitting a word into two or more different keystrokes that the software knows how to knit together. For example, the city of Roswell, NM uses two keystrokes in Plover theory - "ros" and "wel". The reason for a 2-keystroke-or-more word is because of how the stenography keyboard is set up - it presumes a phonetic consonant-vowel-consonant setup.
You can still key "Roswell" (assuming it's in the dictionary) on machine steno faster than typing all seven characters, but you'd have to know the phonetic for it.
Also, it's not uncommon for people to take little bits from one theory and add them to another - and there are bits of Lapwing that I saw when I read it over that I liked over the comparative Plover theory.
Doing machine stenography on most computer keyboards adds a little twist as a lot of keyboards don't have what's called "N-Key Roll Over" (NKRO, as it's commonly written), which means that the keyboard doesn't recognize the fifth or so key held down. Having five keys held down at once is not at all uncommon in machine stenography, so this is an issue. Plover (the software) lets you handle the issue in one of two ways: either releasing the start of your chord and then pressing the keys for the rest of the chord (what's called rolling) or pressing the keys one at a time and then pressing... I think it's the space bar? to signal your chord is done (what's called arpeggiating). A lot of hobbyists that can't afford the specialized stenogoraphy keyboards go for keyboards that can do NKRO, but the workaround... works, basically.
As for my own personal progress:
Still working on learning the keyboard via a site called "stenojig". I'm running into a bit of difficulty because my brain refuses to accept multiple of a letter on a keyboard and said letters are in different places! For example, there is a "S" and a "R" on both sides, but the left-hand "S" is to the farthest left, while the "R" is to the farthest right, and the right hand is the opposite: the R is to the left and the S is to the right. On the same row. At least with the way that the keys are written in stenography makes it easy to know which of the two R or S keys you're supposed to press, but dangit muscle memory!
I think I'm going to use Plover theory instead of the alternate Lapwing - since I'm mostly drilling finger positions rather than typing words at this point there's no harm, no foul. There are a lot more online exercises for the Plover theory and upon further examination they have their own strengths and weaknesses and I think I like Plover's a bit better. A lot of learning steno is the fun of coming up with your own dictionary - though you can totally use the default dictionary (which, as mentioned before, was created by a professional court reporter). This also may be better if I decide to jump to a stenography school after I retire as a 2nd freelance income/something to do as Plover is a definite close offshoot of StenEd.
As things go, I may end up incorporating parts of the Plover dictionary into my own and then jumping off for the rest, which is totally fine and normal for machine stenography. But I'm not there yet! Right now I'm too busy trying to remember to reverse R and S depending on which hand.
I'm not at all stressed about my progress as it can take months to type at a decent speed in stenography. Even people looking to go into professional court reporting rarely graduate because they can't type at the required speed, and I am not paying more than for my hobbyist keyboard.
I've come to realize that there's a lot to explain about machine stenography!
So, the general idea of either kind of stenography - whether shorthand or machine-based - is that you sound out words phonetically and remove unneeded/duplicate characters. The word "Cat" becomes "kat" while the word "Well" becomes "wel". For machine stenography, this also means sometimes splitting a word into two or more different keystrokes that the software knows how to knit together. For example, the city of Roswell, NM uses two keystrokes in Plover theory - "ros" and "wel". The reason for a 2-keystroke-or-more word is because of how the stenography keyboard is set up - it presumes a phonetic consonant-vowel-consonant setup.
You can still key "Roswell" (assuming it's in the dictionary) on machine steno faster than typing all seven characters, but you'd have to know the phonetic for it.
Also, it's not uncommon for people to take little bits from one theory and add them to another - and there are bits of Lapwing that I saw when I read it over that I liked over the comparative Plover theory.
Doing machine stenography on most computer keyboards adds a little twist as a lot of keyboards don't have what's called "N-Key Roll Over" (NKRO, as it's commonly written), which means that the keyboard doesn't recognize the fifth or so key held down. Having five keys held down at once is not at all uncommon in machine stenography, so this is an issue. Plover (the software) lets you handle the issue in one of two ways: either releasing the start of your chord and then pressing the keys for the rest of the chord (what's called rolling) or pressing the keys one at a time and then pressing... I think it's the space bar? to signal your chord is done (what's called arpeggiating). A lot of hobbyists that can't afford the specialized stenogoraphy keyboards go for keyboards that can do NKRO, but the workaround... works, basically.
As for my own personal progress:
Still working on learning the keyboard via a site called "stenojig". I'm running into a bit of difficulty because my brain refuses to accept multiple of a letter on a keyboard and said letters are in different places! For example, there is a "S" and a "R" on both sides, but the left-hand "S" is to the farthest left, while the "R" is to the farthest right, and the right hand is the opposite: the R is to the left and the S is to the right. On the same row. At least with the way that the keys are written in stenography makes it easy to know which of the two R or S keys you're supposed to press, but dangit muscle memory!
I think I'm going to use Plover theory instead of the alternate Lapwing - since I'm mostly drilling finger positions rather than typing words at this point there's no harm, no foul. There are a lot more online exercises for the Plover theory and upon further examination they have their own strengths and weaknesses and I think I like Plover's a bit better. A lot of learning steno is the fun of coming up with your own dictionary - though you can totally use the default dictionary (which, as mentioned before, was created by a professional court reporter). This also may be better if I decide to jump to a stenography school after I retire as a 2nd freelance income/something to do as Plover is a definite close offshoot of StenEd.
As things go, I may end up incorporating parts of the Plover dictionary into my own and then jumping off for the rest, which is totally fine and normal for machine stenography. But I'm not there yet! Right now I'm too busy trying to remember to reverse R and S depending on which hand.
I'm not at all stressed about my progress as it can take months to type at a decent speed in stenography. Even people looking to go into professional court reporting rarely graduate because they can't type at the required speed, and I am not paying more than for my hobbyist keyboard.
