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<p>I mentioned in my <a href="https://www.rousette.org.uk/archives/building-a-corne-low-profile-keyboard/">previous post</a> that one of the reasons I decided to build my
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Corne keyboard was to make it easier to learn stenography with <a href="https://www.openstenoproject.org/plover/">Plover</a>. Why would
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I want to learn stenography? Well, part of an honest answer would be that it
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seemed interesting, and I enjoy learning new things, but I was also motivated by
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the idea that I might be able (in time) to substantially increase my typing
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speed, while typing in a more ergonomic way.</p>
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<p>Stenography is a completely different way of writing text than any of the
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conventional keyboard methods. Traditionally, it tends to be used in court
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reporting or live captioning, where stenographers are able to transcribe
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everything that is said in real time. To do this, they use a stenography
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machine, and must be able to type at more than 225 words per minute. Stenography
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machines have levers rather than keys (a bit like a typewriter), each of which
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requires a very light touch to register the stroke. Instead of hitting keys one
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by one, as you do on a regular keyboard, stenographers hit multiple keys
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simultaneously — pressing between keys vertically or horizontally — to
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generate chords. The chords are then translated into whole words, syllables or
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whole phrases, depending on they system used (or ‘theory’). This is what makes
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stenography (or ‘steno’) so fast: you can produce whole (sometimes long) words
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with a single stroke, and the software also deals with inserting spaces between
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words, capitalising words at the start of sentences, and so on. This makes it
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much easier for stenographers to exceed speeds of 250 words per minute (the
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world record is 360 WPM), but also to keep up that pace comfortably for hours on
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end.</p>
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<p>This is obviously something that would be potentially useful to anyone who types
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a lot a keyboard, but the problem — pre-Plover — was that stenography
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required special (very expensive) machines and the only way you could learn
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how to do it was to enrol in a stenography course, which is also extremely
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expensive and has a high drop-out rate. This made it inaccessible to amateurs who
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have no wish to do either court reporting or live captioning, but just want to
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be able to type faster, more comfortably. Plover (which is open source), enables
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you to translate output from an ordinary keyboard into steno strokes. The
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software runs on your computer, translating output from your keyboard in real
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time, and also enables you to edit the dictionaries which translate steno
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strokes into words, so that you can add in words that you use frequently.</p>
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<p>You <em>can</em> use Plover with an ordinary QWERTY keyboard. However, unless it has
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n-key rollover (NKRO) — the ability to register all the key presses when
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multiple keys are pressed simultaneously — you will have to arpeggiate the
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keys, which is less than ideal. Also, as I found, if your keycaps are further
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apart, or if your keys require a bit of force to depress (e.g. 50 or 60 g, which
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is typical for mechanical keyswitches), it is difficult to make strokes which
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require several adjacent keys to be pressed. I started learning on my ErgoDox
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EZ, but have found it much easier with my new Corne keyboard, both because of
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the closer spacing of the keycaps, and the lighter force needed to activate the
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keys.</p>
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<p>Learning steno is hard, but fun. The process of generating chords feels
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extremely odd at first, but the satisfaction of seeing whole words pop out when
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you get it right is delightful. I’m following the excellent suggestions on the
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Plover wiki for the <a href="https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Learning-Stenography">best way to learn</a> stenography, and my knowledge is gradually
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increasing. The steno keyboard layout looks downright weird. The left and right
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hand halves are all consonants, then there are four vowels under the thumbs (A,
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O, E and U). Some letters are missing entirely (X, J, Y and I, for example), and
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some are repeated on both halves (S, T, P, R). The basic idea is that words are
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chorded phonetically by syllables. The starting sounds are represented by
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the left hand, vowels in the middle, then ending sounds on the right half.
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Sounds that are missing are generated by combining keys. For example the word
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‘love’ is <code>HRUF</code> in Plover. The <code>HR</code> keys make the ‘l’ sound, the <code>U</code> is a short ‘o’
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and the <code>F</code> is a ‘v’ sound.</p>
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<p>It takes quite a long time to learn the layout and the sounds represented by the
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combinations of keys. I am finding the vowel sounds more complicated than the
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consonants, because in English, the vowel sounds aren’t differentiated by
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accents or similar markings like they are in other languages, so I think we
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English speakers don’t think very often about what a long or short ‘o’ is, for
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example. This, of course, is what makes learning how to pronounce words like
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‘through’, ‘thorough’ and ‘thought’ so difficult for people learning English.
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I’m gradually getting to grips with it though, and it has made it much easier
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for me to guess chords for new words correctly.</p>
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<p>Plover isn’t an entirely phonetic system. There are a lot of dictionary entries
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which are known as ‘briefs’. These are abbreviations of common words to
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save time or to make what would be tricky chords easier to hit. For example, you
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can hit <code>S-B</code> (that’s the <code>S</code> on the left side and the <code>B</code> on the right side) to
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output the word ‘somebody’. ‘The’ is just the <code>-T</code> key on the right side, while
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‘it’ is the <code>T</code> on the left side. These are trickier to learn, but gradually, with
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practice, they become more ingrained, and that helps you to speed up.</p>
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<p>Plover is also aware of orthographic rules in English. You can use the <code>-S</code>, <code>-D</code>
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and <code>-G</code> keys on the right side (among others) to change the endings of words. So
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you could chord <code>RAOEUD</code> for ‘ride’ then hit the <code>-G</code> key and the word would
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automatically change to ‘riding’ (not rideing) because Plover knows the rules
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for adding the suffix ‘-ing’ to words. There’s similar shortcut for adding
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‘-ed’ to words with the <code>-D</code> stroke. Once you are familiar with the strokes for
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sounds, you don’t have to know how a word is spelled, only how it sounds.</p>
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<p>There are all sorts of other delightful things you bump into. While I was
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learning the chord for the ‘F’ sound, I was playing around with words starting
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with the sound and randomly wrote ‘flip’ followed by ‘flop’. Plover immediately
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removed the space it had added, and hyphenated the word into ‘flip-flop’.
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Similarly, when I typed ‘kit’ (<code>KEUT</code>) followed by ‘cat’ (<code>KAT</code>), it transformed to
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‘KitKat’ (mmm… KitKats…). If you type the words in the reverse order (flop
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flip), it assumes that’s what you meant and doesn’t change them, because there
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is no valid word ‘flop-flip’ or ‘KatKit’. By the same
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token, small errors in the keys you press can result in an entirely different
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word popping out. I kept finding that trying to write ‘help’ (<code>HEP</code>) would result
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in ‘pelvis’ (<code>PEL</code>) because I was one key over on both my left and right hands!</p>
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<p>My current QWERTY typing speed is somewhere between 60 and 70 WPM, but my steno
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speed is still only around 10 words per minute. My accuracy is slowly creeping
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up though, and as I mentioned, I’m getting better at guessing the outline (i.e.
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the chords needed) for words I haven’t encountered yet. I’m practising for a bit
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of time each day, and I have steno flashcards on my phone so that I can test
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myself if I have a few minutes when I might otherwise be scrolling idly. My
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hope is that when I get to more than 30 WPM, I might be able to use steno for
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actual typing (rather than practice), and that the extra, real-world experience
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will increase my speed more quickly.</p>
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<p>Remember when I started learning a weird keyboard layout, and <a href="https://www.rousette.org.uk/archives/reverting-to-qwerty/">had to revert to
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QWERTY</a> because it destroyed my ability to type on a normal keyboard? I did worry
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that I might experience the same thing with steno. However, so far it has not been
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a problem. Alternative keyboard layouts only change where each of the characters
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is on the keyboard, so trying to keep two layouts in your muscle memory seems to
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be very difficult. In contrast, steno is so different in terms of the actions
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your fingers make and the output that you generate that it seems (fingers
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crossed!) not to interfere with QWERTY typing much. If I am trying to type out
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single letters (particularly when entering the steno outlines above), by brain
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gets a bit confused and goes to the positions of those letters in the steno
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layout, possibly because my brain has slipped into ‘steno mode’ to think about
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the outlines. However, in normal typing, it isn’t a problem. I’ll see how it
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goes. It’s a really fun experiment anyway, and I’m having fun learning. If it
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ends up not going anywhere because it’s too difficult or it messes up my
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ordinary typing, I won’t consider it a waste of time. After all, people do
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crosswords or sudoku to keep their brains active, but this has the potential to
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also make me a speed typist!</p>
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