People often ask me, “How does that thing work?” Sometimes my standard response is, “Ancient Chinese secret.” Well, it actually dates back to Greece, which would go with the saying, “It’s all Greek to me.”
Often referred to as “shorthand” in the past, which also refers to such methods as Gregg and Pittman, it is an abbreviated writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to writing or typing in longhand. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek stenos (narrow) and graphein (to write).
The first stenographic machine in the U.S. was created by Miles Bartholomew and patented through his company, The Stenograph Company, in 1879 (to see an evolution of the stenography machine, please see the related article from Stenograph in the blog).
The difference in a stenotype keyboard from a standard keyboard, also known as a QWERTY keyboard, are the number of keys. There are 22 keys on a steno keyboard, along with a number bar, and the middle asterisk bar, which allows us to write many more abbreviated forms of words at a much faster rate. Much like modern day texting, we write sounds as we hear them, phonetically. We were writing “U” for “you” way before it became mainstream on phones. As you can see, not every letter is on the shorthand machine keyboard. So, for instance, if we wanted to write the letter “N,” we would simultaneously press the letters “TPH” all at once. Or for the letter “Y,” we would press the letters “KWR” all at once. Confused yet?
Below is a breakdown of how we decipher long and short vowel sounds; e.g., the word “say” from “sat,” and also a listing of our steno alphabet that we use on the keyboard to make up for the “missing” letters.
Coming out of school, we are required to write 225 words per minute two-voice testimony. Most days, however, we are writing much faster than that. I’ve compiled a working dictionary over the years that translates my writing style to English as I’m typing, which comes up in a realtime feed on my computer, and which can also be distributed to the attorneys via wireless realtime access on their laptops or iPads. Depending on the content of the deposition, I may or may not have all words in my dictionary, and I’m constantly building my dictionary on a daily basis. My software now has the capability to suggest brief forms for me to write. This especially comes in handy in medical depositions and can help increase my speed and accuracy. A good example of this is with a case I worked on that involved Rhabdomyolysis. After writing it a few times, my dictionary is smart enough to suggest something that will allow me to do one stroke on the keyboard as opposed to four.
So I can honestly say I learn something new almost every day in this career. I love my job, and I feel blessed to possess this skill that I learned. It can be hard work at times, but I like the challenges, and I like knowing at the end of the day that I am helping my clients, who, in turn, are helping their clients. So, TPH-L LAOEUT/ER (translated to “until later”)…..
Eve Wilbanks, RPR