It has to be translated into the common tongue before it can be used further. But to the lawyer, jury, or litigants at court, or to the medical practitioner using the transcription services, it looks like gibberish. The stenotype transcript may seem completely meaningful to a trained stenographer. How is the transcript from the stenotype translated to common English? The court reporter can have their own specific symbols for this entire phrase to save themselves some more time. Instead of typing them every time, they simply represent it with a symbol they can understand.įor example, standard phrases like “May it please the court” or “The objection is overruled” are used in almost every proceeding. For instance, a courtroom reporter has to type certain phrases in almost every legal document or court proceeding they are covering. Stenographers often use their own system of abbreviations that they can understand and it may not always be part of a general rule. There are many shorthand theories that they can use and each has its own rules and approaches. So, they need half or one-third of the time we need to type the same word.ĭifferent court reporters trained in shorthand may use different conventions to represent certain words, such as a homonym or word with different meanings. But how do stenographers make sense of it? We’ve already mentioned that instead of writing a word letter by letter, stenographers write them in terms of syllables. So, we have understood how the stenotype machine works. This may not make sense to us but for a trained stenographer the final transcription will have all that they need. Similarly, for the letter N, they would use T, P, and H simultaneously. To type a syllable that starts or ends with M, the stenographer types P and H together to get the phonetics right. For example, the stenotype machine does not have the letter M in it. So, a stenographer spells out syllables in terms of phonetics. This is a valid doubt as the English alphabet has 26 letters but the stenograph has only 22. You may now be wondering how they type the missing alphabets. While other people would need 7 or 8 strokes. So a 7 or 8 letter word with three syllables, for instance, will only take the stenographer 3 strokes to type. The vowel keys are used for the vowels of course.Ī stenographer usually presses 3 keys at once, which is known as a chord, to get a syllable. The keys on the left are used to type the first letter of a syllable of the word, the keys on the right give the last letter of the syllable. The transcript that the machine creates may not be comprehensible to a layman but for someone trained in shorthand writing, it makes sense. There is a bar across the top of the machine that is used to type numbers. The modern stenograph has two rows of keys on each side, which represent consonants, and 4 keys at the center, in front, with the vowels A, O, E and U. The stenotype machine (also called the stenograph), used by court reporters and transcriptionists, has a special keyboard with only 22 keys. That is almost double the speed of what a person could type on a regular keyboard. These are typing machines with specially designed keyboards that allow a stenographer to write at a rate of nearly 300 words a minute. There are numerous shorthand typing machines today, which are called stenotype machines. Modern-day stenographers or transcriptionists do not transcribe by hand though. Using these symbols instead of writing complete words and sentences made it much easier to note down speech faster. The traditional shorthand method relied on symbols representing specific words, letters, or sounds. Now visit ExLibro and get a Qualified continuing education for lawyers, lawyers and estate agents, as well as accountants and accounting consultants.īack in the day, traditional stenographers documented speech into writing by hand. The term stenography comes from the Greek words “stenos” and “graphy.” Stenos means narrow while graphy means writing, so stenography translates to narrow writing which is what shorthand does. What is a stenographer?Ī stenographer is a trained transcriptionist who can record dictation or speech to a written copy. Let’s try to understand everything about stenographers and stenography here. The modern-day stenographer has, however, evolved from the traditional methods and there are now new ways that make writing or typing fast much easier.
Such people are trained to write in what we call “shorthand” methods. You may have wondered how the person documenting a court case or writing down a media interview manages to note down everything at such a fast pace.
Writing fast and writing correctly is an incredible skill in itself.
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