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A steno machine Basic Lesson
Diploma in Office Management Technology with Specialization in Legal Office Management (DOMTLOMPQ)
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A steno machine, stenotype machine, shorthand machine, stenograph or steno writer is a specialized chorded keyboard or typewriter used by stenographers for shorthand use.
Basics This section has been created to teach you how you can use a QWERTY keyboard for Stenography and to give you a good foundation of Stenography basics.
Topics covered in this section: How Stenography works How to access all the letters available to the left hand How to access all the letters available to the right hand How the vowels are written Basic word making All of the lessons in this section are supplemented with practice exercises to help you learn faster and in a more hands-on way.
Begin
The thumbs type the vowels of the syllable The right hand types the final consonant of the syllable The word "stop" can be written by typing "ST" with the left hand, "O" with the left thumb and "P" with the right hand. These keys would be pressed all at the same time and the word is written when all the keys are released.
As you may have noticed, the steno keyboard has less keys than a conventional keyboard. Not all the letters of the alphabet are represented on the steno keys so in order to type the missing letters, we use combinations of other letters. This will be covered in a later lesson.
Keep reading to find out how you can use your QWERTY keyboard to write steno!
How it works Thanks to modern keyboard technology, you don't need to buy a $3,000 steno machine in order to learn stenography. All you need is a modern keyboard that has N-Key Rollover (NKRO). Most gaming keyboards have this but we recommend the Microsoft Sidewinder X4 keyboard.
But wait! You can still try stenography right now for free! All you have to do is use a technique called "arpeggiating".
As mentioned in the introduction - A steno stroke is finished when all the keys are released. When arpeggiating, you press the first couple of keys of the chord, then as you press the third key you release the first key. Then as you press the fourth key you release the second key and so on. This means you only have a couple of keys pressed at once and all keyboards will be able to cope with this. Some keyboards will allow certain keys to be pressed together up to 8 keys at a time, but it all depends on how your keyboard is wired.
When the final key is released, the steno software will take all the keys that were pressed and turn it into the correct output. You can practice this on the next page.
We recommend using Plover as your steno software as it is currently the only free stenography software on the market and can be used with Qwerty keyboards as well as most Steno machines.
Here is an illustration of how the keys of a QWERTY keyboard map to the keys of the steno keyboard.
QWERTY: Qwerty Steno Keyboard
Key Demo Before we get started, it's important that you are familiar with which Qwerty keys correspond to the Steno keys and which fingers should be used to press each key.
Use the below demo to get familiar with this. Click below and start pressing keys on your keyboard. Make sure you are using the correct finger for each key.
Note that the asterisk is usually pressed with the index finger of the right hand but you can use the index finger of the left hand if that is more comfortable.
The Vowels At the heart of every syllable is a vowel.
The vowels in steno are written using the thumbs. As you can see below, there are 4 keys that relate to vowels on a steno keyboard.
Qwerty Steno Keyboard We'll break the vowels up into groups.
Short: Keys Example A Mat, Ant O Got, Pocket E Let, Fed U Grump, Bull EU Grip, Pit Notice how you make the vowel "I" by pressing both "E" and "U" together.
These five vowels all have "long" versions. The way to make the long version of the vowel is to add the two vowel keys from the other hand.
For example, you can press "A" to make a short "A" as in "cap". If you add the vowels from the other hand ("E" and "U"), you get a long "A" as in "cape"
This works for all vowels except "O" which is written "OE".
Spelling Differentiators: Keys Usage AO Spelling "oo" or "oa" AE Spelling "ea" or "ae" An example of using spelling differentiators would be when two words sound the same but you need the steno software to output the correct word. For example when writing "Pair" or "Pear". Both of these words sound the same and would be written phonetically on a steno keyboard as "PAEUR". But the steno software can only output one word. In this case the output would be "Pair". So in order to write "Pear", we use the spelling differentiator and write "PAER".
While steno is mostly phonetic, sometimes it uses spelling to inform how to write a word. So if a word is written with a short vowel, it will usually be written with the same vowel on the steno keyboard, regardless of what it actually sounds like. For example, "Pert" and "Purr" have the same sound, but "Pert" is written with the "E" key, and "Purr" is written with the "U" key.
S T P R
The steno keyboard has some letters that appear as keys on the left that don't appear as keys on the right. It has some letters that appear as keys on the right that don't appear as keys on the left. However there are four letters that appear on both sides. These will be the first consonants we will learn.
S: S is under the pinky fingers.
S P: P is on the top row under the middle fingers.
P R: R is on the bottom row under the index fingers.
R
Right Hand Keys Here are all the keys for the right hand.
Hint: T and D are often grouped together in phonetics because they both come from the same part of the mouth. On the right side of the keyboard these two keys are pressed by the same finger. The same applies to S and Z. These are very similar sounds and on the right side of the keyboard they are pressed by the same finger. When you have memorised these keys.
Left Hand Chorded Letters - Part 1 D:
Hint: D and T are phonetically similar. B:
Hint: B and P are phonetically similar. L:
Q:
When you have memorised these chords, click Next to practice them.
Right Hand Chorded Letters M:
K:
X:
Hint: X is KS. Instead of "Box", think "boks". N:
J:
When you have memorised these chords, click Next to practice them.
Left Hand Chorded Letters - Part 2
C:
When you have memorised these chords, click Next to practice them.
Level Complete Well done on completing this level! You now have some new skills! Hopefully through these lessons you have become interested in steno and want to learn more. There are more lessons in the Intermediate section or you can practice what you've already learned in the Practice section. Congratulations!
A steno machine Basic Lesson
Course: Diploma in Office Management Technology with Specialization in Legal Office Management (DOMTLOMPQ)
University: Polytechnic University of the Philippines
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