estirose

The New York Times put out an article on machine stenography! It was pretty good.

Here's an excerpt: "The most compelling case for steno may not be in its professional applications whatsoever. On Plover’s Discord server, which has over 7,000 active members, stenographers of every skill level commiserate over the common challenges of shorthand and share new ways to abbreviate words. While only a handful may go on to pursue careers that require stenography, hobbyists can seek out a sense of community that functions almost like a fandom, exchanging notes about how they’re spinning up shorthand to suit their needs."

Whole article is paywalled but if you don't access the site often you might be able to read it anyway: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/25/crosswords/steno-online-court-reporters.html

As far as my own practice goes, I am slowly adding words to my practice drills. I am now learning words that include or end in -D (the steno letter) and chorded -TS and -DZ. I'm having a little trouble with the word "Worlds" (keyed WORLDZ) and it's non-plural version "world". Basically, I need more practice.

These 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.)

( More about hobbyist steno and a bit of background about stenography machines in general )
( My progress so far )