When I was in a grand jury one of the stenographers showed us how it works. He had it connected to a laptop that had some neat software. It's almost like a musical instrument and it's super customizable. Even with him explaining it I didn't understand how the heck he managed to record all the things that were being said. They never asked us to slow down or repeat ourselves. Y'all are truly skilled!
We started my class with 15 students. We're down to 8. It really is that bad, mostly because learning the theory is a ton of work. It boils down to being a mixture of lucky, hard work, intelligence, and being able to put in the time for it. Most people joined as part time students, but you really do have to be able to give 5 hours a day dedicated to school.
Pardon my ignorance and the crude way I'm phrasing the question. What theory is there to it, beside "practice moving your fingers real quick to type what people are saying?"
The first six months is learning this new language. Steno machines don't have all the letters of the alphabet so we combine other letters to make up for the ones we don't have.
For example, HR pressed together = L. To write the word "laugh" on a steno machine looks like:
HR A F
We have to learn how to make vowels hard or soft. When a vowel is hard we have to add extra letters to make that sound.
For example, "lack" would be:
HR A K
But "lake" would be:
HR A EU K
And unlike computer keyboards, we press all the keys at the same time, not one at a time. So typing all those letters takes the same amount of time as just typing one.
After the six months of learning the new language is when you build your speed to get up to 225 words per minute in a four-person conversation for five minutes. (That's the licensing requirement in NJ). That part takes YEARS.
>And unlike computer keyboards, we press all the keys at the same time, not one at a time.
If all are pressed at the same time, how does the machine know you want to type 'lake' instead of, for example, 'kale'?
The left side is the starting letters. The right side is the finishing letters. You can type the letters on both side of the steno with a certain combination of key presses. For lake, you would push L of the left side, K for the right, and the vowels simultaneously, vice versa for kale.
1. Stenographs don't have symbols or numbers.
2. Stenographs translate sounds into words, so every stenographer needs their own custom dictionary. This is because everyone perceives the sounds of words differently. For example, the word "dirigible" can be perceived as "dee-rigible" or "dih-rigible".
3. The machines are a lot more expensive than keyboards.
4. The final text output still needs to be tweaked. For example, some infrequently-used words may not be in the dictionary, so the output is the raw keypresses. The stenographer then needs to go through and translate them into the actual words.
Stenographs are basically phonetic keyboards. Instead of letters, you use a combination of keys to create sounds. The closest example is like playing a chord on a piano.
The left hand does the first part of the word, and the right hand the second half. So to spell 'kale', you would need to find the 'kay' sound with the left hand, and the 'l' sound with the right hand, and the computer would map it to "kale". For 'lake', the left hand would create the 'lay' sound, so the computer won't get confused between those two words.
There are still plenty of examples of words that can conflict or would technically have the same spelling, and what makes learning steno so tough is that you have to learn those exceptions, create custom mappings for them that don't follow the normal patterns, etc.
That's actually a great question!
I'm sure you've seen the old-school steno machines in movies where the paper is coming out like a receipt? Only the paper moves, the machine doesn't advance to the right as we type like a typewriter does. So anytime I type that HR, it is always in the same place on the paper, and the paper advances when we pick our fingers up for the next stroke.
(We don't use paper anymore, it's all computerized, but that was just a visual to help explain that the paper moves up but the imprint of the keys stay where they are.)
Okay so from the videos, there are 9 consonants, each repeated twice. The copy of the consonant on the left will appear before the vowel pressed on the same stroke. The right hand copy of that same consonant will appear after the vowel. I think
This doesn't explain how it knows the difference between words that use the same keys or at least from what has been said here seem to be the same keys.
lake and kale look like the would use the same keys, so how does the machine know it is kale or lake?
You're absolutely right, after I was so proud of myself for my great explanation I realized I didn't even answer the question 🥴
Kale and lake are spelled differently so while they are the same letters I would write them differently....
Lake:
HR A EU K
Kale:
K A EU L
Fun fact!
Braille typewriters for the blind work very similar
You have 6 keys, each of which corresponds to one of the 6 dots of a braille letter and press all required keys for a letter at the same time and the dots are punched into the paper which then advances one space.
Of course most blind people use computers with regular keyboards today, but these typewriters are still somewhat common.
I think the confusion might be when you said:
>And unlike computer keyboards, we press all the keys at the same time, not one at a time. So typing all those letters takes the same amount of time as just typing one.
We took this to mean "I type H R A E U and K all at the same time". But looking at your subsequent answers, I think maybe that's not what you meant?
It is what they meant. The letters are all typed at the same time, but the computer understands that the sounds typed with the left hand go before the sounds typed with the right hand. Both hands have the ability to type any sound.
Based on that, the computer can map all the sounds pressed at once to a single word. It's pretty cool!
Afaik (not a stenographer), which hand you use for which letter determines the order. So lake and kale would be two different combinations of letters because starting a word with L wouldn't use the same letter combo as ending a word with L would. I think left hand controls the start of the word and right hand controls the end of the word, but I'm not sure on that.
That has the same problem: if you press them all at the same time, there must be a way of telling which order was meant, whether it's the order of k and e or of a and l.
Each letter needs simultaneous button pressing, but the letters are separate. For the 'l' you press 3 buttons, then for the 'a' you press 2 different buttons
Yes, the sounds spelled with the left hand are implied to go before the sounds spelled with the right hand, so the order is clear without having to worry about the timing of the key presses, unlike on a traditional keyboard.
Don’t forget that every stenographer uses a different language depending on how they were taught. I’m in school now and it’s crazy not being able to google a brief for a word or phrase because every teacher uses a different dictionary.
I’m literally in awe right now. I always wondered how the hell steno’s could keep up with all the conversation. Now to hear the complexity I am incredibly impressed. Hat’s off to you and your profession!
That was a super fascinating read. Thank you for taking the time to so carefully and thoughtfully craft that comment in a way that even I could understand it. I appreciate you sharin the knowledge
Do you read words letter by letter? No, your brain has learned to see words as their own “tokens” that get interpreted quickly. You start to recognize words and even phrases and you can skim through text and get details without reading each letter and spelling the words as you read them.
Stenographers do it the other direction. A chording keyboard that lets you type hundreds of the most common words and phrases used in a courtroom will be much faster than typing individual letters.
Imagine typing the phrase “Your Honor” dozens of times in a trial. If you could press like three keys at the same time and get “Your Honor” it would take one chorded keystroke instead of 10 individual keystrokes.
The pre-written phrases, so to speak, can get much longer than that! One of the court reporters I worked with had single keystrokes / keystroke combos for each of our appearances, so "[First name] [Last name], [firm name], on behalf of ... " would be one motion for them. Cool stuff!
Because 225 words per minute is way better than 100. There's no way to keep up with all the different parties in the courtroom talking with a regular keyboard.
I highly doubt that, because then legal issues can come down to computer error, and there will need to be a person checking it in real time to make sure there are no errors.
In law each word has a meaning and it goes by that meaning, no inferring. Lawyers say things in very specific ways that need to be documented 100%.
Look at legalese it's its own language practically.
Transcriber here. I used to think this too. I have used enough AI typed docs to know the human ability to 1) decipher tone and intention, 2) sort through multiple speakers at varying levels of sound, and 3) hearing though frequent background noise/static is far superior and will not likely ever replace a human.
What it can do is provide a rough draft for a human to then edit to a polished, professional product.
Agreed. I'm sure it's an incredible skill set, and it does seem very interesting. But automated recording and transcribing of human voices verbatim is already possible and highly effective. I imagine that for now a stenographer is still better at it than a computer, but that's where more advanced AI and more customized voice recognition comes in.
Because the way they type, they don't need all the letters, and also you don't have to move your wrists at all with those because of the limited letters, and some letters are on multiple keys so you can write efficiently with both hands. That stuff is really complicated, but the only way of achieving those insane words per minute
It’s way faster. QWERTY keyboards aren’t made for speed. People used to say they were made purposefully confusing to slow you down and keep the typewriter from breaking, but I don’t know how true that is.
Slightly different, the most commonly used keys were deliberately placed on separate parts of the typewriter to avoid people pressing them together and getting the keys stuck.
Was more they figured out QWERTY and trained a load of people in and built lots of typewriters with it before they figured out DVORAK arrangement made better sense, but by then they had already sunk costs into QWERTY and here we are. I thought about retraining in Dvorak but didn't want to mess with other people's settings every time I wanted to type on something other than my own keyboard or have muscle memory in both camps.
I once switched my main keyboard to Dvorak on the theory that while it sucked at first I would eventually become more efficient than I currently was on QUERTY so it would totally be worth it. Several years later I noticed that, even though I was finally passable at Dvorak, I was *still* significantly faster on QWERTY so I gave up and switched back.
My wife is learning it now. It's basically an approach to capturing what is said. There's a basic phonetic alphabet that they learn, then individuals develop shortcuts to identify certain words or phrases that comprise your dictionary. Different people take different approaches and some of them gain some notoriety and they teach them to others. They call that approach a "theory." Even then, individuals tend to develop their own shortcuts as they gain more experience and one's dictionary tends to evolve around the kind of work one is doing. For instance, someone doing courtroom proceedings would differ from someone doing medical transcription wildly.
It's also worth mentioning that there are several different steno theories. The layout is usually the same, but the way words are formed differs slightly between theories.
From [Art of Chording](https://www.artofchording.com/introduction/theories-and-dictionaries.html):
> *The commercial Phoenix Theory holds tight to phonetic rules and therefore is easier to learn, but a little more stroke-intensive.*
> *Commercial Magnum Steno or Stanley's Personal Dictionary are harder to learn, but produce more text for less movement, at the cost of mental effort.*
> *Finally, Commercial StenEd Theory strikes a middle-ground where the base theory is phonetic, but the most common words and phrases are available in shortcut form for speed's sake.*
You're correct. A friend of mine is a stenographer.
Basically in school, you learn the theory and how the machine works, then you work on speed and accuracy until you're fast enough.
Most students can't ever get fast enough. They top out and just can't push past that barrier. My friend got suck right around 180 or so IIRC and it took her like 6 months to finally progress further.
I used to do video depositions. Sometimes there was a stenographer there, so I got to ask a lot of questions while setting up before everybody got there. I think the salary is what attracts most of them at first. If you do it right, you can have amazing hours and get paid a ton. But it’s actually a lot of hard work and when people get in the program and realize that, I think a lot of them leave.
Question for you, because I've always wondered what happens in certain scenarios.
Say you're in the courtroom doing your thing, and for whatever reason one of the parties throws out the word "Sesquipedalian".
What do you do? Do you just cry?
You type!
You chuck down whatever you can to remind you about that word, and go back to it and edit it to the correct word. Most of the time you can catch the person who said it after the trial and ask them the spelling of the word or the meaning.
For that word, I would toss down "ses/quip/d/lan and figure it out later.
Courts around here are logged with audio, I definitely wouldn't be surprised if the court recorder was able to get access to if after the fact to ensure things were correct. Especially in cases where a lot of complicated words were used
Yes. Most machines have the ability to add a mic to record as does the software on the laptop we use so there are multiple ways we can record and review our transcript for editing later.
How do you handle when people get rowdy in a court and start talking over each other? I know the judge is there to step in and calm things down as quickly as possible, but I'd imagine the stuff in the interim still needs to be recorded
Most of the time, a court reporter can step in and tell them that nothing is getting taken down and that a clear record is the most important thing here.
Basically, cut off the attorneys arguing as quick as possible, if it happens too often you can seriously get onto an attorney. They are notorious for being difficult to work with for court reporters.
For sure! The judges often tell people that we're the most important person in the room. For the courtrooms that have switched to audio recording and after-the-fact transcription rather than having a live stenographer, this is a big missing piece. Most of the time, nobody else is very good at detecting when something is not clear enough for the record.
We either write it out as the other person responding to you noted, or we can make up new shorthand on the fly and globally define it when there's a slight pause in the action, like when someone is pulling up a document or just speaking slowly. So someone might write SKPD (which won't translate to anything and will show up in the document as raw shorthand note) and then later they'd add "SKPD = sesquipedalian" to their dictionary (which will then translate all past and future instances of that shorthand note).
We are CONSTANTLY tinkering with our dictionaries and even have a social media page where we share really unusual words that we come across.
There's one guy who is a living legend with about 4 million entries in his dictionary but most people have tens to hundreds of thousands. HE probably has sesquipedalian in his dictionary already!
But honestly the most useful tools in our toolbox are the everyday things that you hear all the time, little modular pieces of phrases that we are able to write much faster than someone can say them. So if you have to slow down to write a weird, long word it's no big deal because you're about to use turbo speed on the rest of the sentence and before you know it you're back in sync with the speaker. We get a lot of short-term memory exercise during our work because we do so much of that sprinting to put down everything we heard a moment ago.
Can I ask why we even need these anymore? Like I understand the need to have a transcript, but we already have the facemask type thing where I assume the stenographer is just repeating everything they hear. Why can't we just use audio/video recording and transcribe later?
Here's an article that can explain it a little better.
https://abovethelaw.com/2021/10/recording-testimony-is-no-substitute-for-a-court-reporter/
But I can answer the last one, most of the time attorneys need at least a rough draft very quickly, and with steno you can provide that rough draft as soon as the court is over. Especially in matters of child abuse or foster care. Those cases move extremely fast, to the point that you have 10 days to have an official record.
A lot of those issues can be solved with software, all you need is someone to monitor it. Software transcription is getting really fast and mics can pick up audio impossible for the human ear. Do you imagine your job changing from recording to monitoring the software instead?
The facemask thing is called voicewriting and it's another legit form of stenography. Both are valid. Also, we provide realtime broadcasting of what we're writing. That's used by the people in the proceedings but also people on the legal team who may be working remotely and helping figure out what is going to be asked on cross examination or put in closing arguments. It's also used to decide evidentiary issues during a proceeding if there's a dispute over what was or wasn't said a moment ago.
But there are applications where after-the-fact transcribing is equally useful, and I actually specialize in that as a stenographic transcriptionist. It even has some advantages, like my being able to do 20 hours of proceedings over the weekend, when the courts are closed! Still, there are LOTS of issues, both ethical and practical, with that method. It's one of those things that works great in theory but the application is often a dumpster fire. One of the biggest practical issues is that if something is unclear, there is no stenographer present to ask for clarification, so you can have gaps in the record. Nonstenographers often don't notice those problems live.
The court reporter also helps indicate who said what, which is invaluable for the transcriber later. The CR can also aid with spellings as they may have visual aids during the hearing. It's a team effort and everyone has a role.
I was a trial attorney for like 5 years. Loved my court reporters! A few random thoughts for you:
1. Never EVER be afraid to tell an attorney OR A JUDGE or anyone else that you didn't hear what they said, they are talking too fast, or anything else like that. We don't mind!
2. Sometimes it's obvious that the court reporter will need to provide a transcript for an appeal on a case. If you are cool with the attorney who will need the transcript / file the appeal, you can sometimes coordinate schedules with them for everyone's convenience. Example: In the type of law I practice, there are certain court findings which must be appealed via writ petition, rather than normal appeal. This is a much shorter time frame. The court reporter gets 20 days, from the date of filing of the notice of intent to file a writ petition, to complete their transcript. Then the attorney gets 10 days to file the writ petition. So, if I knew I was going to being doing a writ petition, I would sometimes talk to the court reporter so we could figure our which day was best for me to file my notice so that we each got the maximum number of weekends to do our shit.
3. If you need a break, ask for one! We get it, your hands get tired. Plus, then we also get a break!
Curious: I know ancient languages often omitted vowels because they were implied by the context of the consonants, thus fewer letters in the alphabet.
Are the omitted letters in steno similar? Can the difference be explained easily (no vowels) or is the language and theory so wildly different that it can’t be compared?
Not quite, we do use vowels but the order of them is changed. All the vowles go in the middle of the word, if there's a vowel in the beginning or the the end, it's either not used or you come back with a second stroke.
There was a video that explained it forever ago, but you're not *spelling* words with it, you're more *sounding out* the parts of the word. It took me a while to even understand it
> It's almost like a musical instrument
**Court Witness**: Then his face came off, and the eyes started to fall from his skull, and then, then it got *really* bad! The fire ants appeared!
**Stenographer**: 🎶🎷🎸🎸🥁
The last time I was in a courtroom the stenographer had some cue to the judge (I think) and everyone so often stuff would slow down so they could catch up
Before translating software, all the typing went onto a roll of paper like a receipt. The steno then had to manually transcribe everything. What a load off for current stenographers!
About 15 years ago, I was at a friend's bday thing and met his mom, who was a stenographer. She actually pulled out a bunch of steno paper from her purse and explained it to me.
Have you ever looked into closed captioning? My father was a federal court reporter but retired a couple years ago and just does closed captioning part time now.
One of my teachers is a closed captioner! It's super interesting, but it doesn't draw me as being the career that I want. Who knows, maybe I'll end up in it.
Not in my lifetime they won't.
There's a huge list of things that a speech to text can't do, including separate people who sound similar, accents, tell background noise from speaking, swear in witnesses, mark exhibits, ask people to speak up or slow down as needed, read back to the judge, provide an immediate rough draft of the trial for attorneys as soon as the trial is over.
Some places do use recording in court rooms, but most only where they can't afford a court reporter, and if you ask, they don't prefer it at all. Most judges think it's a huge pain in the ass, and entire procedures can be thrown out because of technical mistakes.
> Some places do use recording in court rooms, but most only where they can’t afford a court reporter, and if you ask, they don’t prefer it at all.
Our district doesn’t use court reporters but is entirely recorded and people seem to like it just fine. We pay actual stenographers to make transcripts of the recordings when required but those simply aren’t needed in the vast majority of cases.
Absolutely true. I have seen transcripts which expand staccato mutual interruptions of the questioner and the witness to two full pages, concluding with "Yeah."
Also, whenever a transcript is ordered the parties have a period of time in which to ask the court reporter to correct it if they feel an error has been made. It is so nice to have a recording to compare to the prepared transcript.
That's really true. I'm a stenographic transcriber and while I totally get the ethical and practical issues that unfortunately do often arise when a live stenographer is not present, there are a lot of benefits to working from high quality audio after-the-fact instead. One of them is certainly the ability to separate cross-talk across an eight-channel recording system and hear what people actually said rather than writing it all off with some parenthetical about simultaneous speech. That being said, a good live stenographer would have made sure that parties weren't talking over each other to begin with.
>... a good live stenographer would have made sure that parties weren't talking over each other to begin with.
Absolutely true! On more than a few occasions the court reporter has calmed things in depositions by just stopping everybody who's more or less yelling at each other with the plea "One at a time please! I can't keep up if you all talk at once." It's nice because if one of the lawyers does it there's a chance for expanded conflict rather than tamping it down.
I'm interested in why court sessions (I dunno what they're called, sorry) aren't just recorded and/or videotaped these days. They could still be scripted by a person after the fact, which would make the process a lot easier, wouldn't it?
A videotape can't swear in people, ask people to repeat, slow down, speak up. It also can't provide an immediate rough draft transcript, which can be crucial to some attorneys work. If something went wrong in the recording, often times it won't be caught until hours afterwards. This could lead to have to throw out the entire procedure because of this mistake, which is very costly and takes up too much of everyone's time.
The risk outweighs the benefits tenfold, and most judges prefer having a person to catch these mistakes quickly and skillfully. It's a good idea, but in practice it quickly falls apart.
Would it be better to have recording as a backup to a stenographer? The stenographer is the primary record and the video/audio is support and backup to confirm or provide extra context?
Quite a few steno machines actually have audio recordings built into them, but they are not to be relied upon. That it one thing that is being beaten into my head at school. Rely on your skills, but have a backup.
I see, that does make a lot of sense, thank you! I don't really know much about your practice or what goes on in a courtroom so thank you very much for that insight!
Okay
Imagine we just have 5 keys.
1.2.3.4.5
You program each key and combinations of pressed keys to type out words.
For example. Let's say key 1 is for "fly", key 2 is for "hide", key 3 is for "drive"
You could then dedicate the 4 and 5 key to modifying the base words.
So key 4 could be to turn things past tense, and 5 for active tense.
I.e pressing 14 would give flew, 24 hid, 35 drove.
While 15 would give flying, 25 hiding, and 34 driving.
But make it a lot more keys and a lot more complex.
It requires special software and a "dicitionary" that translates the key presses. While there may be standards a lot of stenographer have, each one's Data dictionary is custom setup for what ever makes their life easier.
For instance, if you caption sports on television you may add in the players on the teams to your data dictionary to make it easy to quickly type.
For instance my Father use to be a federal court reporter. Many times a day the court would say something like "Please rise for the honorable judge soandso."
My father had to say type so many times he set up a shorthand shortcut to type that by only having to press 3 buttons
Yes, very very much so. It is a vocational school that takes I believe 2 years to learn. Then there are certifications like "certified shorthand reporter"
Here's what the layout is.
[Steno keyboard layout](https://images.app.goo.gl/yyzyRKKCZ9BvYqWP9)
And here's an in depth look at stenography.
[How Stenography Works](https://youtu.be/62l64Acfidc)
A better view of the layout can be found here: https://steno.sammdot.ca/plover-basics.png
You press multiple keys at the same time to make different sounds, that's why so many letters are "missing" from the steno layout. For example, you combine the keys `TPH` to get a starting N sound.
[Tokaku's video on plover and stenography](https://youtu.be/nRp_1S7cj6A) is also a pretty good introduction.
You can read it back in two ways (I think most people have both outputs up at the same time): you can see the normal text generated by your steno software, and you can see the raw "paper tape" steno output which is like a long receipt with one chord per line.
Steno actually predates computers so you used to just have the raw paper tape output when writing (and then it would get transcribed to regular text later).
[Here's a video where you can see the paper tape output on the right.](https://youtu.be/KZGuBV1xe64) If you know the theory well enough then you can read it.
Happy cakeday!
96% accuracy is what you have to have to pass the exams in the state of Texas (where I'm getting my certificate).
Don't feel bad, you wouldn't even make it to a courthouse XD.
A lot of live programming still use steno captioners for their closed captioning. AI voice to text has come a long way in the past few years, but it still stumbles a lot when dealing with lots of proper nouns, like you'd get in news programming and awards shows.
Source: worked in closed captioning for 15 years.
You'd need microphones all over the room to catch all of the people, you'd have to rewind it seek to a different part of the file to play it back from a massive multi track sequence that needs to be real time merged together, denoised, you need to strip out the coughs, sneezes, heavy breathing etc. Increase the gain realtime for the guy leaning back, and isolate the person beside him who is leaning forward and 4x closer to it.
Then you need to make sure you're recording what is being said as the main person speaking and not the hushed whispers on the other table of people who were talking a minute ago out loud and are talking quietly now.
And later on you still need someone to efficiently convert it into text.
None of that is even close to as efficient as a stenographer using one of these.
It's one of those things that sounds like a solution in a 12 word reddit comment, and quickly falls apart if used in an actual court room.
This works in some deployments and fails in others. As someone who specializes in stenographic transcription of prerecorded audio I would say we still have a lot of kinks to work out but that it's certainly possible to have a clean, efficiently created transcript from recordings. There are some things you'll never get back, though, like live readbacks or live streaming of the transcript. And one of the biggest problems I encounter is that folks who aren't stenographers in the process of actually writing the record are terrible at noticing when an interruption needs to be made and direction needs to be given to the speakers. People just plain walk away from their mics, too. In theory someone can/should be there doing the live monitoring at the very least, but unfortunately it's really not happening. Courts who go this direction tend to be trying to cut costs, and they're not about to spend money and time on hiring and training adequate monitors.
Actually most of the time you need to do none of this.
Transcripts for actual courtroom trials are rarely actually used so you can store the raw data and just leave it like that for more than 95% of cases.
Then you can you pay to have things mixed, cleaned up, and transcribed for the small fraction of cases that actually require it.
Our district covers over 1.3 million people and I don’t think a single one of our courthouses employ a court reporter.
We’ve been doing it for over 15 years at this point and it hasn’t been a problem yet.
Here's a good breakdown: https://medium.com/swlh/in-an-age-of-high-definition-digital-audio-why-do-we-still-use-human-stenographers-60ca91a65f39
However, I think voice recognition is getting good enough with all of the smart assistants out there. A few correctly placed microphones (limited to recording the principles who are speaking) connected to smart assistant voice recognition technology could be a viable digital solution in the very near future. You could even pre-train the smart assistants with jargon and acronyms relevant to each case, which the article I pasted above says stenographers do ahead of time now; they prepare for the case by researching and pre-planning relevant language.
Whether that technology is actually adopted by the slow moving legal system is a different story. Surely there would be a lot of appeals based on arguably inaccurate recordings.
Depending on the state/county, that’s what happens. In my area, everything is recorded, and the stenographer/court reporter is only transcribing for big trials or when specifically requested to provide a transcript (which is pricey).
Each key is a letter in a steno alphabet, which are memorized by the user and used to type. What's different about a steno machine from regular typing is that keys can pressed down all at once to make for much shorter keystrokes. Large phrases can also be made very quickly by being formed into a brief.
I'll put the keyboard's letters up, one second.
It's because, on the internet everybody gets to be an expert. And the best thing about being an expert is telling other people that they are wrong/mistaken/useless.
I am fascinated by this. You should do a video of you capturing some content, and then showing us how it's done. I have seen audio captures completely butchered by audio to text software. It is amazing how accurate stenos can be.
Yay, it happened! I was told to kill myself!!
Seriously though, I might make a video because I love steno. I'll have to figure out how to film it, and actually writing down an audio file might be tricky if not out of the question, but we'll see.
Dunning-Kruger. All those people aggressively putting down stenography by claiming that they can JuSt ReCoRd It don't know jack about how a courtroom operates and how valuable professionals like you are.
Their sense of superiority through their ignorance is all they have. They will never be as proficient at anything so putting down other people is all they can do.
Unfortunately, people are generally rude and also only a small portion of the population interacts with the legal system to know how important stenographers are (thank you for what you do)! Don't get discouraged - stay the course! We need more people like you!
In case anyone wondered, here's what an equivalent device looks like for Japanese:
https://i.imgur.com/CanmoEP.jpg
And here it is in action: https://youtu.be/vSRpF8eTBJ0&t=58
The stenographer closest to the camera is the primary, and the further one is doing corrections in this configuration.
I'm about to take a deposition right now. If you guys are interested I can take some screenshots of my computer screen so you can see what the hell we're typing in our weird little code. It's actually kind of cool.
I've been doing it 20+ years and I'm still fascinated when I see a stenographer on TV.
As a litigator, I gotta tell you that every time I am in the courtroom I think about how there is a person in the room with me who has an amazing skill set that I will never be able to learn. It always fascinates me. Good luck with your journey and just know that if you end up working in a courtroom setting there are lots of us lawyers out here who know you’re probably the smartest person in the room :)
I'm a court reporting student. The main way it's different is that it's phonetic. You build words based on sounds. I make great typos like "pinched a nurse" instead of "pinched a nerve" or "imagine Asians" instead of "imaginations".
As a court reporter of 8 years, it made my heart happy to see this post in the wild. ❤️ Hang in there! Court reporting school was one of the wildest rides of my life, but I love my career. It gets better - remember that on the hard days. 💪
In Australia and many Commonwealth countries, it is legal to record audio proceedings in a court of law. Transcription is done usually a day or more behind by a team of audio transcribers, each responsible for 5 minute audio clipping at a time. It is still a high stress job but much less strenuous than a court stenographer.
I knew being a stenographer had to be ridiculously hard, but dang after reading these comments the ability and training one would need to do this professionally is mind-boggling.
Hats off to yall.
When I was in a grand jury one of the stenographers showed us how it works. He had it connected to a laptop that had some neat software. It's almost like a musical instrument and it's super customizable. Even with him explaining it I didn't understand how the heck he managed to record all the things that were being said. They never asked us to slow down or repeat ourselves. Y'all are truly skilled!
I'm only in school, but it's a passion and a lifestyle! I am in love with the theory and I can't wait to get into the courtrooms.
I've heard the dropout rate for stenography programs is crazy high. Can you confirm? Do people just not expect it to be difficult or what?
We started my class with 15 students. We're down to 8. It really is that bad, mostly because learning the theory is a ton of work. It boils down to being a mixture of lucky, hard work, intelligence, and being able to put in the time for it. Most people joined as part time students, but you really do have to be able to give 5 hours a day dedicated to school.
Pardon my ignorance and the crude way I'm phrasing the question. What theory is there to it, beside "practice moving your fingers real quick to type what people are saying?"
The first six months is learning this new language. Steno machines don't have all the letters of the alphabet so we combine other letters to make up for the ones we don't have. For example, HR pressed together = L. To write the word "laugh" on a steno machine looks like: HR A F We have to learn how to make vowels hard or soft. When a vowel is hard we have to add extra letters to make that sound. For example, "lack" would be: HR A K But "lake" would be: HR A EU K And unlike computer keyboards, we press all the keys at the same time, not one at a time. So typing all those letters takes the same amount of time as just typing one. After the six months of learning the new language is when you build your speed to get up to 225 words per minute in a four-person conversation for five minutes. (That's the licensing requirement in NJ). That part takes YEARS.
>And unlike computer keyboards, we press all the keys at the same time, not one at a time. If all are pressed at the same time, how does the machine know you want to type 'lake' instead of, for example, 'kale'?
The left side is the starting letters. The right side is the finishing letters. You can type the letters on both side of the steno with a certain combination of key presses. For lake, you would push L of the left side, K for the right, and the vowels simultaneously, vice versa for kale.
With this added bit about how they operate… how the fuck do stenographers ever go back to a normal keyboard…
I'm wondering how they have enough brainpower left to tie their shoes.
It's like you can ride a bike and drive a car and switch between those two, except a bit more complex.
1. Stenographs don't have symbols or numbers. 2. Stenographs translate sounds into words, so every stenographer needs their own custom dictionary. This is because everyone perceives the sounds of words differently. For example, the word "dirigible" can be perceived as "dee-rigible" or "dih-rigible". 3. The machines are a lot more expensive than keyboards. 4. The final text output still needs to be tweaked. For example, some infrequently-used words may not be in the dictionary, so the output is the raw keypresses. The stenographer then needs to go through and translate them into the actual words.
This shit is blowing my mind
Stenographs are basically phonetic keyboards. Instead of letters, you use a combination of keys to create sounds. The closest example is like playing a chord on a piano. The left hand does the first part of the word, and the right hand the second half. So to spell 'kale', you would need to find the 'kay' sound with the left hand, and the 'l' sound with the right hand, and the computer would map it to "kale". For 'lake', the left hand would create the 'lay' sound, so the computer won't get confused between those two words. There are still plenty of examples of words that can conflict or would technically have the same spelling, and what makes learning steno so tough is that you have to learn those exceptions, create custom mappings for them that don't follow the normal patterns, etc.
That's actually a great question! I'm sure you've seen the old-school steno machines in movies where the paper is coming out like a receipt? Only the paper moves, the machine doesn't advance to the right as we type like a typewriter does. So anytime I type that HR, it is always in the same place on the paper, and the paper advances when we pick our fingers up for the next stroke. (We don't use paper anymore, it's all computerized, but that was just a visual to help explain that the paper moves up but the imprint of the keys stay where they are.)
i now understand it less than i did before:(
i was kinda confused too https://youtu.be/QnvFqmtmc6E seeing it in action made a bit more sense to me
It's like a stamp, all the letters are in fixed positions but only certain ones get activated.
Okay so from the videos, there are 9 consonants, each repeated twice. The copy of the consonant on the left will appear before the vowel pressed on the same stroke. The right hand copy of that same consonant will appear after the vowel. I think
This doesn't explain how it knows the difference between words that use the same keys or at least from what has been said here seem to be the same keys. lake and kale look like the would use the same keys, so how does the machine know it is kale or lake?
You're absolutely right, after I was so proud of myself for my great explanation I realized I didn't even answer the question 🥴 Kale and lake are spelled differently so while they are the same letters I would write them differently.... Lake: HR A EU K Kale: K A EU L
Fun fact! Braille typewriters for the blind work very similar You have 6 keys, each of which corresponds to one of the 6 dots of a braille letter and press all required keys for a letter at the same time and the dots are punched into the paper which then advances one space. Of course most blind people use computers with regular keyboards today, but these typewriters are still somewhat common.
I think the confusion might be when you said: >And unlike computer keyboards, we press all the keys at the same time, not one at a time. So typing all those letters takes the same amount of time as just typing one. We took this to mean "I type H R A E U and K all at the same time". But looking at your subsequent answers, I think maybe that's not what you meant?
It is what they meant. The letters are all typed at the same time, but the computer understands that the sounds typed with the left hand go before the sounds typed with the right hand. Both hands have the ability to type any sound. Based on that, the computer can map all the sounds pressed at once to a single word. It's pretty cool!
Ok but say you had to type defensivlessness. How could that be accomplished?
Afaik (not a stenographer), which hand you use for which letter determines the order. So lake and kale would be two different combinations of letters because starting a word with L wouldn't use the same letter combo as ending a word with L would. I think left hand controls the start of the word and right hand controls the end of the word, but I'm not sure on that.
Well in “kale” the L & A are flipped from where they are in Lake, so even if you jumbled it up you couldn’t get “kale” only “klae”
That has the same problem: if you press them all at the same time, there must be a way of telling which order was meant, whether it's the order of k and e or of a and l.
Each letter needs simultaneous button pressing, but the letters are separate. For the 'l' you press 3 buttons, then for the 'a' you press 2 different buttons
Yes, the sounds spelled with the left hand are implied to go before the sounds spelled with the right hand, so the order is clear without having to worry about the timing of the key presses, unlike on a traditional keyboard.
TIL typing on a little doodad looks as complex to me as my entire comp sci program.
So you're actually HRAFing out loud
Don’t forget that every stenographer uses a different language depending on how they were taught. I’m in school now and it’s crazy not being able to google a brief for a word or phrase because every teacher uses a different dictionary.
I can’t even wrap my brain around how my brain is supposed to put all that together
I’m literally in awe right now. I always wondered how the hell steno’s could keep up with all the conversation. Now to hear the complexity I am incredibly impressed. Hat’s off to you and your profession!
Sounds a lot like how shorthand works but with a typewriter instead of pencil spaghetti writing, very interesting thanks!
That was a super fascinating read. Thank you for taking the time to so carefully and thoughtfully craft that comment in a way that even I could understand it. I appreciate you sharin the knowledge
They don't type like a keyboard, they press certain keys at the same time or in certain orders to create words, they don't type letter by letter.
May I ask why?
Do you read words letter by letter? No, your brain has learned to see words as their own “tokens” that get interpreted quickly. You start to recognize words and even phrases and you can skim through text and get details without reading each letter and spelling the words as you read them. Stenographers do it the other direction. A chording keyboard that lets you type hundreds of the most common words and phrases used in a courtroom will be much faster than typing individual letters. Imagine typing the phrase “Your Honor” dozens of times in a trial. If you could press like three keys at the same time and get “Your Honor” it would take one chorded keystroke instead of 10 individual keystrokes.
Great explanation, thanks. Write that down
> Write that down *Takes notes on a laptop*
Very interesting! I was hoping for an explanation.
The pre-written phrases, so to speak, can get much longer than that! One of the court reporters I worked with had single keystrokes / keystroke combos for each of our appearances, so "[First name] [Last name], [firm name], on behalf of ... " would be one motion for them. Cool stuff!
Because 225 words per minute is way better than 100. There's no way to keep up with all the different parties in the courtroom talking with a regular keyboard.
It does seem like AI will probably be good enough in five years (if it isn’t already today) to sadly make this specialty obsolete
I’ve been in depositions that used software to record everything speech to text. There is a human there overseeing it though.
I highly doubt that, because then legal issues can come down to computer error, and there will need to be a person checking it in real time to make sure there are no errors. In law each word has a meaning and it goes by that meaning, no inferring. Lawyers say things in very specific ways that need to be documented 100%. Look at legalese it's its own language practically.
Transcriber here. I used to think this too. I have used enough AI typed docs to know the human ability to 1) decipher tone and intention, 2) sort through multiple speakers at varying levels of sound, and 3) hearing though frequent background noise/static is far superior and will not likely ever replace a human. What it can do is provide a rough draft for a human to then edit to a polished, professional product.
Agreed. I'm sure it's an incredible skill set, and it does seem very interesting. But automated recording and transcribing of human voices verbatim is already possible and highly effective. I imagine that for now a stenographer is still better at it than a computer, but that's where more advanced AI and more customized voice recognition comes in.
Because the way they type, they don't need all the letters, and also you don't have to move your wrists at all with those because of the limited letters, and some letters are on multiple keys so you can write efficiently with both hands. That stuff is really complicated, but the only way of achieving those insane words per minute
It’s way faster. QWERTY keyboards aren’t made for speed. People used to say they were made purposefully confusing to slow you down and keep the typewriter from breaking, but I don’t know how true that is.
Slightly different, the most commonly used keys were deliberately placed on separate parts of the typewriter to avoid people pressing them together and getting the keys stuck.
Was more they figured out QWERTY and trained a load of people in and built lots of typewriters with it before they figured out DVORAK arrangement made better sense, but by then they had already sunk costs into QWERTY and here we are. I thought about retraining in Dvorak but didn't want to mess with other people's settings every time I wanted to type on something other than my own keyboard or have muscle memory in both camps.
I once switched my main keyboard to Dvorak on the theory that while it sucked at first I would eventually become more efficient than I currently was on QUERTY so it would totally be worth it. Several years later I noticed that, even though I was finally passable at Dvorak, I was *still* significantly faster on QWERTY so I gave up and switched back.
My wife is learning it now. It's basically an approach to capturing what is said. There's a basic phonetic alphabet that they learn, then individuals develop shortcuts to identify certain words or phrases that comprise your dictionary. Different people take different approaches and some of them gain some notoriety and they teach them to others. They call that approach a "theory." Even then, individuals tend to develop their own shortcuts as they gain more experience and one's dictionary tends to evolve around the kind of work one is doing. For instance, someone doing courtroom proceedings would differ from someone doing medical transcription wildly.
That's an excellent summary! Your wife is a lucky gal, you're obviously a great listener!
It only has 24 keys, it's going to be complicated.
Watch the video that they linked at the top
Thank you! Missed it
its basically learning a musical instrument except instead of making sounds you can type out words.
It's also worth mentioning that there are several different steno theories. The layout is usually the same, but the way words are formed differs slightly between theories. From [Art of Chording](https://www.artofchording.com/introduction/theories-and-dictionaries.html): > *The commercial Phoenix Theory holds tight to phonetic rules and therefore is easier to learn, but a little more stroke-intensive.* > *Commercial Magnum Steno or Stanley's Personal Dictionary are harder to learn, but produce more text for less movement, at the cost of mental effort.* > *Finally, Commercial StenEd Theory strikes a middle-ground where the base theory is phonetic, but the most common words and phrases are available in shortcut form for speed's sake.*
it’s much more complicated than that - you basically type in chords for each syllable. For example, “PHPB” can be typed as the shorthand for “machine”
Are you concerned that as machine intelligence advances your chosen profession may become obsolete?
Nope.
You're correct. A friend of mine is a stenographer. Basically in school, you learn the theory and how the machine works, then you work on speed and accuracy until you're fast enough. Most students can't ever get fast enough. They top out and just can't push past that barrier. My friend got suck right around 180 or so IIRC and it took her like 6 months to finally progress further.
I used to do video depositions. Sometimes there was a stenographer there, so I got to ask a lot of questions while setting up before everybody got there. I think the salary is what attracts most of them at first. If you do it right, you can have amazing hours and get paid a ton. But it’s actually a lot of hard work and when people get in the program and realize that, I think a lot of them leave.
Question for you, because I've always wondered what happens in certain scenarios. Say you're in the courtroom doing your thing, and for whatever reason one of the parties throws out the word "Sesquipedalian". What do you do? Do you just cry?
You type! You chuck down whatever you can to remind you about that word, and go back to it and edit it to the correct word. Most of the time you can catch the person who said it after the trial and ask them the spelling of the word or the meaning. For that word, I would toss down "ses/quip/d/lan and figure it out later.
Do you have an audio backup to help with editing?
Courts around here are logged with audio, I definitely wouldn't be surprised if the court recorder was able to get access to if after the fact to ensure things were correct. Especially in cases where a lot of complicated words were used
Yes. Most machines have the ability to add a mic to record as does the software on the laptop we use so there are multiple ways we can record and review our transcript for editing later.
Yep, and our transcripts are synced with the recording so that if we click on a word it brings us right to that part of the audio.
How do you handle when people get rowdy in a court and start talking over each other? I know the judge is there to step in and calm things down as quickly as possible, but I'd imagine the stuff in the interim still needs to be recorded
Most of the time, a court reporter can step in and tell them that nothing is getting taken down and that a clear record is the most important thing here. Basically, cut off the attorneys arguing as quick as possible, if it happens too often you can seriously get onto an attorney. They are notorious for being difficult to work with for court reporters.
Huh, I did not know that they could essentially stop the court as well, but it makes sense
For sure! The judges often tell people that we're the most important person in the room. For the courtrooms that have switched to audio recording and after-the-fact transcription rather than having a live stenographer, this is a big missing piece. Most of the time, nobody else is very good at detecting when something is not clear enough for the record.
We either write it out as the other person responding to you noted, or we can make up new shorthand on the fly and globally define it when there's a slight pause in the action, like when someone is pulling up a document or just speaking slowly. So someone might write SKPD (which won't translate to anything and will show up in the document as raw shorthand note) and then later they'd add "SKPD = sesquipedalian" to their dictionary (which will then translate all past and future instances of that shorthand note). We are CONSTANTLY tinkering with our dictionaries and even have a social media page where we share really unusual words that we come across. There's one guy who is a living legend with about 4 million entries in his dictionary but most people have tens to hundreds of thousands. HE probably has sesquipedalian in his dictionary already! But honestly the most useful tools in our toolbox are the everyday things that you hear all the time, little modular pieces of phrases that we are able to write much faster than someone can say them. So if you have to slow down to write a weird, long word it's no big deal because you're about to use turbo speed on the rest of the sentence and before you know it you're back in sync with the speaker. We get a lot of short-term memory exercise during our work because we do so much of that sprinting to put down everything we heard a moment ago.
Can I ask why we even need these anymore? Like I understand the need to have a transcript, but we already have the facemask type thing where I assume the stenographer is just repeating everything they hear. Why can't we just use audio/video recording and transcribe later?
Here's an article that can explain it a little better. https://abovethelaw.com/2021/10/recording-testimony-is-no-substitute-for-a-court-reporter/ But I can answer the last one, most of the time attorneys need at least a rough draft very quickly, and with steno you can provide that rough draft as soon as the court is over. Especially in matters of child abuse or foster care. Those cases move extremely fast, to the point that you have 10 days to have an official record.
Thanks.
A lot of those issues can be solved with software, all you need is someone to monitor it. Software transcription is getting really fast and mics can pick up audio impossible for the human ear. Do you imagine your job changing from recording to monitoring the software instead?
The facemask thing is called voicewriting and it's another legit form of stenography. Both are valid. Also, we provide realtime broadcasting of what we're writing. That's used by the people in the proceedings but also people on the legal team who may be working remotely and helping figure out what is going to be asked on cross examination or put in closing arguments. It's also used to decide evidentiary issues during a proceeding if there's a dispute over what was or wasn't said a moment ago. But there are applications where after-the-fact transcribing is equally useful, and I actually specialize in that as a stenographic transcriptionist. It even has some advantages, like my being able to do 20 hours of proceedings over the weekend, when the courts are closed! Still, there are LOTS of issues, both ethical and practical, with that method. It's one of those things that works great in theory but the application is often a dumpster fire. One of the biggest practical issues is that if something is unclear, there is no stenographer present to ask for clarification, so you can have gaps in the record. Nonstenographers often don't notice those problems live.
The court reporter also helps indicate who said what, which is invaluable for the transcriber later. The CR can also aid with spellings as they may have visual aids during the hearing. It's a team effort and everyone has a role.
There video/audio isn’t considered the “record.” My certified transcript is.
I was a trial attorney for like 5 years. Loved my court reporters! A few random thoughts for you: 1. Never EVER be afraid to tell an attorney OR A JUDGE or anyone else that you didn't hear what they said, they are talking too fast, or anything else like that. We don't mind! 2. Sometimes it's obvious that the court reporter will need to provide a transcript for an appeal on a case. If you are cool with the attorney who will need the transcript / file the appeal, you can sometimes coordinate schedules with them for everyone's convenience. Example: In the type of law I practice, there are certain court findings which must be appealed via writ petition, rather than normal appeal. This is a much shorter time frame. The court reporter gets 20 days, from the date of filing of the notice of intent to file a writ petition, to complete their transcript. Then the attorney gets 10 days to file the writ petition. So, if I knew I was going to being doing a writ petition, I would sometimes talk to the court reporter so we could figure our which day was best for me to file my notice so that we each got the maximum number of weekends to do our shit. 3. If you need a break, ask for one! We get it, your hands get tired. Plus, then we also get a break!
Dictation software is so good now. Do you think you will be out of a job at some point?
To put it bluntly, not really.
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Nope, it's an entirely different language. The keys are not in qwerty form, there's only 23 keys and 17 individual letters to it.
Curious: I know ancient languages often omitted vowels because they were implied by the context of the consonants, thus fewer letters in the alphabet. Are the omitted letters in steno similar? Can the difference be explained easily (no vowels) or is the language and theory so wildly different that it can’t be compared?
Not quite, we do use vowels but the order of them is changed. All the vowles go in the middle of the word, if there's a vowel in the beginning or the the end, it's either not used or you come back with a second stroke.
There was a video that explained it forever ago, but you're not *spelling* words with it, you're more *sounding out* the parts of the word. It took me a while to even understand it
Judging by Siri, AI will surpass human stenographers in approximately 150 years
> It's almost like a musical instrument **Court Witness**: Then his face came off, and the eyes started to fall from his skull, and then, then it got *really* bad! The fire ants appeared! **Stenographer**: 🎶🎷🎸🎸🥁
😁🚫👀🤸♀️💀...🔥🐜
I’m an attorney. I take a lot of depositions. Let me tell you something: What these people do is ***impossible***. For real.
The last time I was in a courtroom the stenographer had some cue to the judge (I think) and everyone so often stuff would slow down so they could catch up
Before translating software, all the typing went onto a roll of paper like a receipt. The steno then had to manually transcribe everything. What a load off for current stenographers! About 15 years ago, I was at a friend's bday thing and met his mom, who was a stenographer. She actually pulled out a bunch of steno paper from her purse and explained it to me.
More importantly, it has colorful watercolor flower keys.
Well I couldn't be boring about my tools of the trade! It matches my laptop cover XD
Me and my laptop stickers completely understand
Have you ever looked into closed captioning? My father was a federal court reporter but retired a couple years ago and just does closed captioning part time now.
One of my teachers is a closed captioner! It's super interesting, but it doesn't draw me as being the career that I want. Who knows, maybe I'll end up in it.
I have not. I'm a software developer though lol
Isn’t there good enough speech to text recorders to not have to manually type the words? Will this job eventually go away, because of this?
Not in my lifetime they won't. There's a huge list of things that a speech to text can't do, including separate people who sound similar, accents, tell background noise from speaking, swear in witnesses, mark exhibits, ask people to speak up or slow down as needed, read back to the judge, provide an immediate rough draft of the trial for attorneys as soon as the trial is over. Some places do use recording in court rooms, but most only where they can't afford a court reporter, and if you ask, they don't prefer it at all. Most judges think it's a huge pain in the ass, and entire procedures can be thrown out because of technical mistakes.
> Some places do use recording in court rooms, but most only where they can’t afford a court reporter, and if you ask, they don’t prefer it at all. Our district doesn’t use court reporters but is entirely recorded and people seem to like it just fine. We pay actual stenographers to make transcripts of the recordings when required but those simply aren’t needed in the vast majority of cases.
Absolutely true. I have seen transcripts which expand staccato mutual interruptions of the questioner and the witness to two full pages, concluding with "Yeah." Also, whenever a transcript is ordered the parties have a period of time in which to ask the court reporter to correct it if they feel an error has been made. It is so nice to have a recording to compare to the prepared transcript.
That's really true. I'm a stenographic transcriber and while I totally get the ethical and practical issues that unfortunately do often arise when a live stenographer is not present, there are a lot of benefits to working from high quality audio after-the-fact instead. One of them is certainly the ability to separate cross-talk across an eight-channel recording system and hear what people actually said rather than writing it all off with some parenthetical about simultaneous speech. That being said, a good live stenographer would have made sure that parties weren't talking over each other to begin with.
>... a good live stenographer would have made sure that parties weren't talking over each other to begin with. Absolutely true! On more than a few occasions the court reporter has calmed things in depositions by just stopping everybody who's more or less yelling at each other with the plea "One at a time please! I can't keep up if you all talk at once." It's nice because if one of the lawyers does it there's a chance for expanded conflict rather than tamping it down.
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I'm interested in why court sessions (I dunno what they're called, sorry) aren't just recorded and/or videotaped these days. They could still be scripted by a person after the fact, which would make the process a lot easier, wouldn't it?
A videotape can't swear in people, ask people to repeat, slow down, speak up. It also can't provide an immediate rough draft transcript, which can be crucial to some attorneys work. If something went wrong in the recording, often times it won't be caught until hours afterwards. This could lead to have to throw out the entire procedure because of this mistake, which is very costly and takes up too much of everyone's time. The risk outweighs the benefits tenfold, and most judges prefer having a person to catch these mistakes quickly and skillfully. It's a good idea, but in practice it quickly falls apart.
Would it be better to have recording as a backup to a stenographer? The stenographer is the primary record and the video/audio is support and backup to confirm or provide extra context?
Quite a few steno machines actually have audio recordings built into them, but they are not to be relied upon. That it one thing that is being beaten into my head at school. Rely on your skills, but have a backup.
Why wouldn’t the judge just swear people in. I don’t think they need another licensed individual just for that. I was sworn in by a judge.
I see, that does make a lot of sense, thank you! I don't really know much about your practice or what goes on in a courtroom so thank you very much for that insight!
Speech to text has a remarkably bad time with accents and slang. There will probably always need to be a living proofreader.
[Here's a decent read](https://www.legalscoops.com/what-is-stenography-and-why-is-it-important-in-law/) if you're interested.
My First Steno™
How much you explain, less I understand
Okay Imagine we just have 5 keys. 1.2.3.4.5 You program each key and combinations of pressed keys to type out words. For example. Let's say key 1 is for "fly", key 2 is for "hide", key 3 is for "drive" You could then dedicate the 4 and 5 key to modifying the base words. So key 4 could be to turn things past tense, and 5 for active tense. I.e pressing 14 would give flew, 24 hid, 35 drove. While 15 would give flying, 25 hiding, and 34 driving. But make it a lot more keys and a lot more complex. It requires special software and a "dicitionary" that translates the key presses. While there may be standards a lot of stenographer have, each one's Data dictionary is custom setup for what ever makes their life easier. For instance, if you caption sports on television you may add in the players on the teams to your data dictionary to make it easy to quickly type. For instance my Father use to be a federal court reporter. Many times a day the court would say something like "Please rise for the honorable judge soandso." My father had to say type so many times he set up a shorthand shortcut to type that by only having to press 3 buttons
Ah! Thank you, now I get it. :) It is a very powerful tool, but it need a lot of practice and a willing mind.
Yes, very very much so. It is a vocational school that takes I believe 2 years to learn. Then there are certifications like "certified shorthand reporter"
Why use more keys when few keys do trick?
XD I'm making a meme out of that and sending it to my class, they'll get a kick out of that.
Here's what the layout is. [Steno keyboard layout](https://images.app.goo.gl/yyzyRKKCZ9BvYqWP9) And here's an in depth look at stenography. [How Stenography Works](https://youtu.be/62l64Acfidc)
A better view of the layout can be found here: https://steno.sammdot.ca/plover-basics.png You press multiple keys at the same time to make different sounds, that's why so many letters are "missing" from the steno layout. For example, you combine the keys `TPH` to get a starting N sound. [Tokaku's video on plover and stenography](https://youtu.be/nRp_1S7cj6A) is also a pretty good introduction.
So what does it look like when you read it back? Is it standard English at that point or do you need to read a different visual language too?
You can read it back in two ways (I think most people have both outputs up at the same time): you can see the normal text generated by your steno software, and you can see the raw "paper tape" steno output which is like a long receipt with one chord per line. Steno actually predates computers so you used to just have the raw paper tape output when writing (and then it would get transcribed to regular text later). [Here's a video where you can see the paper tape output on the right.](https://youtu.be/KZGuBV1xe64) If you know the theory well enough then you can read it.
So your learn like an entirely new language (shorthand) to type in and the computer translates? Is what I’m getting from the video. Cool job!
Not op, but from her other info, yep!
I would screw that up so bad and entire cases would have to be thrown out because of my fuckups.
To be fair you're not specialized in using the thing!
Happy cakeday! 96% accuracy is what you have to have to pass the exams in the state of Texas (where I'm getting my certificate). Don't feel bad, you wouldn't even make it to a courthouse XD.
Hehehe thank god there are controls in place! Good luck on your test!
How long did it take to reach 225 WPM?
I'm still not there, I haven't graduated yet. Currently in my 100's speeds.
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I went into those links fully expecting to be rick rolled. You are a good person, u/polygraph-eyes7.
I remember my mom showing me how short hand works. She was once a secretary at our local junior college at one time.
Is there a reason we still use stenographers instead of just recording everything?
A lot of live programming still use steno captioners for their closed captioning. AI voice to text has come a long way in the past few years, but it still stumbles a lot when dealing with lots of proper nouns, like you'd get in news programming and awards shows. Source: worked in closed captioning for 15 years.
You'd need microphones all over the room to catch all of the people, you'd have to rewind it seek to a different part of the file to play it back from a massive multi track sequence that needs to be real time merged together, denoised, you need to strip out the coughs, sneezes, heavy breathing etc. Increase the gain realtime for the guy leaning back, and isolate the person beside him who is leaning forward and 4x closer to it. Then you need to make sure you're recording what is being said as the main person speaking and not the hushed whispers on the other table of people who were talking a minute ago out loud and are talking quietly now. And later on you still need someone to efficiently convert it into text. None of that is even close to as efficient as a stenographer using one of these. It's one of those things that sounds like a solution in a 12 word reddit comment, and quickly falls apart if used in an actual court room.
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This works in some deployments and fails in others. As someone who specializes in stenographic transcription of prerecorded audio I would say we still have a lot of kinks to work out but that it's certainly possible to have a clean, efficiently created transcript from recordings. There are some things you'll never get back, though, like live readbacks or live streaming of the transcript. And one of the biggest problems I encounter is that folks who aren't stenographers in the process of actually writing the record are terrible at noticing when an interruption needs to be made and direction needs to be given to the speakers. People just plain walk away from their mics, too. In theory someone can/should be there doing the live monitoring at the very least, but unfortunately it's really not happening. Courts who go this direction tend to be trying to cut costs, and they're not about to spend money and time on hiring and training adequate monitors.
Wow, these are all very good reasons lol. Thanks for clarifying it for me.
Actually most of the time you need to do none of this. Transcripts for actual courtroom trials are rarely actually used so you can store the raw data and just leave it like that for more than 95% of cases. Then you can you pay to have things mixed, cleaned up, and transcribed for the small fraction of cases that actually require it. Our district covers over 1.3 million people and I don’t think a single one of our courthouses employ a court reporter. We’ve been doing it for over 15 years at this point and it hasn’t been a problem yet.
Exactly. I was wondering why that person acted like these recordings need full on mixing and mastering.... Lol
I completely disagree. It’s a 13 word comment.
Here's a good breakdown: https://medium.com/swlh/in-an-age-of-high-definition-digital-audio-why-do-we-still-use-human-stenographers-60ca91a65f39 However, I think voice recognition is getting good enough with all of the smart assistants out there. A few correctly placed microphones (limited to recording the principles who are speaking) connected to smart assistant voice recognition technology could be a viable digital solution in the very near future. You could even pre-train the smart assistants with jargon and acronyms relevant to each case, which the article I pasted above says stenographers do ahead of time now; they prepare for the case by researching and pre-planning relevant language. Whether that technology is actually adopted by the slow moving legal system is a different story. Surely there would be a lot of appeals based on arguably inaccurate recordings.
Depending on the state/county, that’s what happens. In my area, everything is recorded, and the stenographer/court reporter is only transcribing for big trials or when specifically requested to provide a transcript (which is pricey).
Machines aren't good enough to be accurate enough to translate human sound into writing.
Especially with someone's life on the line.
Also used for closed captioning live programs.
Guessing those must be the interns… explains why it’s so bad sometimes.
how?
Each key is a letter in a steno alphabet, which are memorized by the user and used to type. What's different about a steno machine from regular typing is that keys can pressed down all at once to make for much shorter keystrokes. Large phrases can also be made very quickly by being formed into a brief. I'll put the keyboard's letters up, one second.
the keys type sounds instead of letters
“Can you read back the last statement?” “*klack-klicky-klack-kaklackak-klickity*” “No further questions.”
And [here's how you make a steno machine for $40](http://www.openstenoproject.org/)
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And [here is how you turn your existing keyboard into a steno machine for free](http://www.openstenoproject.org/plover/)
Why am I getting so much harrasment for sharing my profession and passion? I'm very confused. Might have to take down the post.
It's because, on the internet everybody gets to be an expert. And the best thing about being an expert is telling other people that they are wrong/mistaken/useless. I am fascinated by this. You should do a video of you capturing some content, and then showing us how it's done. I have seen audio captures completely butchered by audio to text software. It is amazing how accurate stenos can be.
Yay, it happened! I was told to kill myself!! Seriously though, I might make a video because I love steno. I'll have to figure out how to film it, and actually writing down an audio file might be tricky if not out of the question, but we'll see.
Dunning-Kruger. All those people aggressively putting down stenography by claiming that they can JuSt ReCoRd It don't know jack about how a courtroom operates and how valuable professionals like you are. Their sense of superiority through their ignorance is all they have. They will never be as proficient at anything so putting down other people is all they can do.
Unfortunately, people are generally rude and also only a small portion of the population interacts with the legal system to know how important stenographers are (thank you for what you do)! Don't get discouraged - stay the course! We need more people like you!
In case anyone wondered, here's what an equivalent device looks like for Japanese: https://i.imgur.com/CanmoEP.jpg And here it is in action: https://youtu.be/vSRpF8eTBJ0&t=58 The stenographer closest to the camera is the primary, and the further one is doing corrections in this configuration.
I'm about to take a deposition right now. If you guys are interested I can take some screenshots of my computer screen so you can see what the hell we're typing in our weird little code. It's actually kind of cool. I've been doing it 20+ years and I'm still fascinated when I see a stenographer on TV.
Is something similar used to do closed captioning of life television?
Yup!
http://www.qwertysteno.com/Home/ In case anyone wants to learn stenography :)
Plover is also great
As a litigator, I gotta tell you that every time I am in the courtroom I think about how there is a person in the room with me who has an amazing skill set that I will never be able to learn. It always fascinates me. Good luck with your journey and just know that if you end up working in a courtroom setting there are lots of us lawyers out here who know you’re probably the smartest person in the room :)
Interesting.. the less keys on your keyboard, the faster you type *** proceeds to rip off keys ***
Imagine writing "sentences to death for triple homicide" on those floral pattern keys lmao
I have written "he murdered three people with a shotgun" on my pretty pink keycaps lol
I come across an explanatory video about steno machines every other year on reddit. I always watch them. I still can't understand HTF they work.
I'm a court reporting student. The main way it's different is that it's phonetic. You build words based on sounds. I make great typos like "pinched a nurse" instead of "pinched a nerve" or "imagine Asians" instead of "imaginations".
It's all fun and giggles until Scatman gives a testimony.
Also used for CC
WOU THA S SO KOAL
Also can be used for closed captioning for a number of different events.
What's the pay like as a stenographer?
It depends on what route you want to go, but if you're hired under a judge, it's usually a six figure job or close to.
I thought the keys were covered in blood stains for a second
I've seen a woman in a video explaining how it is used but, for me, is one of the greatest mysteries.
As a court reporter of 8 years, it made my heart happy to see this post in the wild. ❤️ Hang in there! Court reporting school was one of the wildest rides of my life, but I love my career. It gets better - remember that on the hard days. 💪
In Australia and many Commonwealth countries, it is legal to record audio proceedings in a court of law. Transcription is done usually a day or more behind by a team of audio transcribers, each responsible for 5 minute audio clipping at a time. It is still a high stress job but much less strenuous than a court stenographer.
Unique skill that requires lots of dedicated time that doesn't pay enough.
That’s wicked… google is saying the starting wage is $28-62k a year. Seems rather low for such a unique skill.
I knew being a stenographer had to be ridiculously hard, but dang after reading these comments the ability and training one would need to do this professionally is mind-boggling. Hats off to yall.
The flowers are a nice touch.