estirose

I realized I hadn't actually made a note about my progress as of late. Progress and some ramblings under cut.

(As a note if you haven't been following this series: When machine stenographers, both professional and hobbyists like me, discuss the standard steno keyboard we use "-" before or after a letter when we need to designate which side of the keyboard a letter is on, unless it's clearer without it. Thus "T-" is the T on the left hand side of the keyboard, while "-T" is the one on the right hand side.)

So, I'm getting better at chording with -D (the last letter on the top right hand side of the keyboard, if you're not familiar with stenography) and -TS (the next to last letters on the top and bottom of the right side). -DZ still eludes me a bit (-Z is right below -D on the keyboard). I've been recently introduced to -TD and -SZ and trying to get my pinkie finger to plunk the two rightmost letters on each row is a bit of a challenge.

I've also met -F as "v" or "s", which actually is very easy to remember. (For those who don't remember my discussion in an earlier part, Steno keyboards and dictionaries are set up in a particular order that should not be violated except in exceptional circumstances. So if you have a word like "rest", it is keyed "REFT" as the S follows the T in steno order.)

(There is an entire concept called "inversion" that I'm still getting my head around, but basically it's the only time where you can break stenography order - for example, in the word "edit" the letter "d" comes after the letter "t" in the order, but because only the D and the T are involved (the "e" comes before the rest of the keyboard and the "i" is dropped), inverting the two letters enables you to key the word with one stroke - though you can still key it as ED and then EUT - "ed" and then "it" in the next stroke if you wish.)

I've discovered that we hobbyists that use Plover theory (that is, if you missed earlier parts, the way you figure out how to chord letters for words) don't use what are called the Philadelphia and California shifts - that is, we don't move our fingers over a row on the right hand side to chord -TZ and -SD (both catercorner on the keyboard) like some of the professional theories do. We also seem to use a different way of indicating a capital letter comes next - the chord "KPA" to start the first word in a sentence/proper nouns, and (what may not be unique to Plover) TP-PL and H-F for period and a question mark respectively followed by a capital letter.