How Stenography Differs From QWERTY Typing

Stanley Sakai, a stenographer by trade, offered a “quick and dirty” explanation about what stenography is, what stenographers do, how stenographers are able to keep up during a hearing or trial and how stenography differs greatly from QWERTY typing.

…Steno is not typing. Typing is when you get one character of output or one press of the keyboard; whereas in steno you press multiple keys at the same time to make a steno outline which must then go through a translation process to produce readable text. …The keys’ correspond to phonemic values rather than letters and certain combinations of keys are used to substitute for sounds that are not present.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.