What is Stenography?

Have you ever thought of pressing multiple keys on your keyboard? You probably have seen Courtroom Reporters typing the whole hearings of the court with a great speed. Do they have the special type of keyboard with them that allows them to press multiple keys at a time? Well sort of. But technically sounding those are not Keyboards. It’s a Special type of machine called Steno-machine. So, In this, we will talk about the machine and the typist who deal with those type of machines.

What is Stenography?

Basically, Stenography is the act or method of recording spoken words through Shorthand using a special type of machines called Steno-Machines. The people’s who work on those machines are called Stenographers. Using a shorthand is not revolutionary as we also have used shorthand in some or the other way. We had shorted the words or phrases with some symbols, likely letters or some drawing to record something in our book during our lectures. Stenography doesn’t work the different way. It also uses some symbols like some of the common alphabets and shapes to record spoken words.

How does it Work?

As I have discussed Stenography is possible due to Steno-Machines. So, Steno-Machines are Specialized Typing Hardware that has only 22 Keys on them. You may wonder how only 22 Keys will be able to come up with 26 Alphabets and Numbers and many other symbols. This is how it works. Basically, every other key on a normal keyboard is achieved by Combining some of the keys on the Steno-machines. The keys on a Steno-machine is basically divided as follows:-

Left section contains 2 rows of 4 keys each containing consonants. Similarly, the right section also contains 2 rows of 4 keys each and all are consonants. Middle section contains 4 keys and they are vowels. The left section defines the initial syllable and right section defines ending syllable. All combine to gives us English like words and phrase.

We can press one or more than one key at a time on a Steno-Machine and thus speeding up the things. On a normal keyboard the typing speed of an average Typist ranges from 80-100 words per minutes, but on a Steno-machine, average typing speed even goes to 300 words per minute.

The Shorthand language written in Steno-machine are then converted into human readable  Languages. In the past few decades, it was manually converted into human readable language. But now it is stored in a flash memory and run through a computer program. In some places, machines are directly connected to the laptops to produce languages in real time.

Where is it used?

Steno-Machines are mainly used in Courtrooms to record the fast ongoing hearings. It is also used to simulate text for deaf people. It is also used to record meetings in organizations. It is also used for producing real-time subtitles for Videos.

So, now I hope you know what is Stenography and its potential uses. I hope this information helps. Finally, Thank you.