My Steno journey, part 7

[estirose]

Slowly learning common briefs. These are basically shortcuts to typing common words - for example, "T-" can be used for "it", "-T (T)" for "the", "W- (W)" for "With", "U" for you, and so on. So to type "It is a cat" you basically type "T S A KAT". I'm also learning which key combos represent which letters for those letters not found individually on one side of a keyboard - for example, the letter "M" on the front half is keyed with "PH-" and "N" is keyed with "TPH-". (These same letters are keyed with "-PL" and "-PB" respectively on the other side of the keyboard.) Sometimes it feels like I'm really smashing the keyboard as a four-key keypress (TKPW) represents the letter "G" (though interestingly enough, to type "go" you can just key those four letters together).

(Another fun one: "EU K TKO TH TP-PH" - which is "I can do this.")

Sometimes the letter combos may not completely make sense and you just have to remember them, like "SKP" for "and".

And sometimes you have to define your own keystrokes. I currently am using "STAE" for "Esti" and "STROS" for "EstiRose" in my own personal dictionary. I also defined STE as the postal abbreviation "Ste" (Suite) as it's not really defined anywhere else. (There is no definition for that postal abbreviation in the dictionary, and nothing else uses "STE" so I think I'm pretty safe. "STROS" is only used for the middle of the word "mostrosity" in the dictionary and I checked to make sure I could key that with no issue - I'm fairly safe there.)

In terms of speed and vocabulary, I'm about 14-15 wpm with the easier stuff and 3-5 wpm with the stuff I'm still learning, not bad. A lot if it's just repetition and getting my fingers to press the correct keys.