Hi there. While not always 100% online I wanted to bring up my wonderful profession of court reporting. It’s used to take down legal proceedings at speeds of 225+ WPM. We also use the stenotype skill in broadcast captioning, which as I understand it is largely remote or through the internet.
If you’d like to learn more about this stuff, you can check out NCRA A to Z, Project Steno, and Open Steno. It can take a long time to learn stenography but some have done it in a year. Took me 20 months. You can read Stanley Sakai’s medium article about why we still use stenographers in an era of high quality audio or his YouTube video Quick and Dirty Steno.
I will say that you should speak to some practitioners about income before you make the jump and start learning. You can find practitioners through NCRA Pro Link, a free directory of stenographers, and search for RPRs (registered professional reporters) or CRCs (certified realtime captioners) in your state so you have a realistic idea of what to expect.
I am not employed by any of these entities and make no $ for posting this. I’m just a man that loves my career. I do have a blog, but in the interest of avoiding self-promotion I won’t mention it.
If you really don’t like the idea of Steno, voice writing (National Verbatim Reporters Association) is an option. This utilizes an ASR profile configured to your voice.
Notably, there’s also something called digital court reporting. But the companies in my industry are basically setting them up to try to bump us stenographers out of the market and then freeze their rates like they tried to do to us. So if you see a WFH option for digital CR, just be wary, make sure they’re paying you appropriately, ask some stenographers how much they’re making so you’re not getting taken advantage of.
This market is anticipated to grow and at least some of it is online so I hope it helps some of you. Please feel free to reach out if I can be more helpful.
Hi 👋
Is anyone around that knows Shorthand (Wikipedia link) / stenotype method of hand note taking at all?
Typically learned by receptionists, assistants, typing pool workers or perhaps transcribers - and in common use up until circa 1970s-80s.
Why do court stenographers use a stenotype? It seems like having to press multiple keys to get one letter seems less efficient.
Not sure if this is the right place to ask (wanted to use Plover Aviary discord that is linked, but seems like it's not working - "no text channels" for me at least), let me know if there's a better one.
Basically I was wondering why the stenotype has this layout it has, whether there are better alternatives or even completely different chorded systems, how was this layout built in the first place, etc.
Basically, I'm looking for some kind of analysis such as carpalx, which compares various normal keyboard layouts across various parameters.
Specifically, I always wondered why one key was "wasted" by doubling the left S instead of having two separate keys there. I'm sure there's a good reason, but I am looking for some studies related to this.
I'm sure in the same way people analyzed QWERTY and found out that various alternatives such as Colemak are superior, there might be ways to optimize stenotype in the same way, right?
EDIT: It's velotype.
I have only tried communicating thought through spoken language, handwriting, and QWERTY. When I use qwerty, as I become too fucked up to type properly, the typos get very hard to interpret, and I wonder how interpretability of typos made with stenotype or velotype compare to those made with QWERTY.
Another problem that I have with QWERTY is that I feel like I am spending too much of my attention on thinking about how to type, instead of using it to have trippy thoughts. Perhaps another typing medium is more suited to jotting down ideas at the rate that they form.
EDIT: By the way, I type ~90wpm with QWERTY sober, and 74 just now, a bit stoned after ~100mg of strong 80% sativa. And my fingers are cold right now. It might not be the bud, so much as that.
Has anyone tried using their ErgoDox for stenography? I've seen a complete layout for it in QMK, but I'm interested in having a layer for it rather than a dedicated firmware.
I only saw palantype today, and that's interesting, but Stenotype would be easier since the layout is pretty much the same as the ErgoDox.
furiousflutter connects the dots, and fangolo has an idea for a new year resolution.
kisloid posts a seemingly inexplicable picture.
pfaff links a wikipedia page on stenotype.
tylermenezes wants to know the best/worst things that happened to you in 2009, and Imagineered starts a discussion about dreams and nightmares.
mistakesweremade answers questions about an expensive fetish, tootall113 talks about being tall, and spammernomore talks about working as an email spammer.
AmbitionOfPhilipJFry reminds redditors to photograph the lunar eclipse, and monkiman96 links a SciAm article on the neural advantages of speaking two languages.
Reddit of the day: /r/foodforthought
Basically, if I learn how to read and write shorthand writing, will I be able to use a stenotype machine? Or are they completely different systems? Also, if they are, which one do ye prefer? Any help would be appreciated.
