ENTRY
[ESC]>> Stenography Primer [03] //
Hello stenography inquirers.
This is part three of the article series about stenography.
In Article [01], I introduced what stenography is and what it does.
In Article [02], I showed the differences between a keyboard and a steno machine as well as introduced the steno layout.
Now it's time to learn about theories.
// Steno Theories
Even though the steno layout is the same across all U.S. English steno machines (STKPWHRAO*EUFRPBLGTSDZ), what is the best way to write the word "chemical"?
- Well, understanding steno order, we know that the left hand is always for the beginnings of words and syllables. The vowels are both thumbs. And the endings of words and syllables are on the right hand.
- Chemical is a long word. So with basic steno order, we're not going to fit the entire word in a single stroke without breaking steno order if we're "writing it out" (what we say when we are trying to accurately represent the word in its entirely, rather than shorten it using briefs. I will explain briefs in a bit).
- Chemical consists of three syllables: Che/mi/cal. So we could write it out using sounds, taking 3 strokes to complete. That would look something like this:
/KE
/PHEU
/KAL
. But 3 strokes for a single word is a lot, especially for a word as common as chemical. Our goal as stenographers is to shorten how we write as much as possible.
But if we wanted to shorten chemical, how would we do it?
This is where a steno theory comes in. A theory is a set of rules around the formation of sounds, chords , words, and briefs (briefs coming soon). The types of theories out there vary. Some are what we call "stroke intensive", meaning they typically write out a word as completely as possible. Others are memorization intensive, meaning they shorten their writing style quite significantly at the cost of using extra brainpower to remember these shortcuts.
>> Writing Faster
We established that our goal as stenographers is to write as quickly as possible. So let's put that into practice with the word "chemical" and see what we can do with it.
- In some theories, the way to quicken their writing is to eliminate the middles of words. If you learn about how people read, we actually typically only read the beginnings and endings of words. The bits in the middle can be copmlelty jumbled and you can still read it just fine. I assume you read and comprehended the word "completely" even though I wrote it like that.
A similar concept can be done in stenography. We can do something like this:
/KEPL (KEM)
/KAL (KAL)
We can still understand and recognize the word even with that middle part missing. It's unnecessary. And by eliminating it, we removed a stroke. But we can do even better.
- Some other theories might even choose to eliminate more parts of the word, deeming them unnecessary. If we write it like this:
/KEPL (KEM)
. That's technically all we need to understand that the word we're trying to write is chemical. It works, but in the process we have introduced complications into our writing unintentionally.
What if we want to write the word "chem"? Even though that's not necessarily a word recognized as proper English, stenographers have to write what they hear, and some people say "chem" or "chems" as slang.
This is what's called a "conflict." There are many conflicts in writing stenography because English is a very messy language. How a stenographer deals with these conflicts is part of what a theory is used for. I'll cover conflicts in more detail later. - Some theories try to avoid conflicts by creating what are called briefs, or shortened chord combinations that represent a word but might not be recognizable as the word it's representing. So a brief for chemical might look like this:
/KAEUPL (KAIM)
. Obviously there is no word such as KAIM in English, so this leaves that chord open to be used as a brief for something. We do have the word "came" in English, but that is typically written as /KAEM, or if someone wants to spell it out to avoid a conflict, they might write /KRAEM (KR can be read as the letter C).
But in this instance, the stenographer (or the theory) will have chosen to use KAIM to represent chemical.
So there you have multiple ways of writing the word chemical, depending on the theory. Now apply this concept to every word in the English language and you can quickly see writing stenography isn't so simple.
// Foundational Theories
Though there are many theories out there, most share the same lineage. A few theories have become the Rosetta Stone of stenography, which is what allows most stenographers to understand each others' writing, even if we didn't learn or use the same theory.
Here are some of the foundational theories:
- StenEd) This is one of the oldest theories still taught today. It is considered a stroke intensive theory as it writes out words completely.
- Phoenix) This theory, though newer than StenEd, is still more on the stroke intensive side. The major difference between it and StenEd is that Phoenix writes almost entirely phonetically, combining vowels into shortened, generalized ending consonants.
- Realwrite/Realtime) This theory chooses to focus more on spelling than phonetics, which makes the theory able to handle conflicts in a more rule-heavy manner, rather than creating single instances where the stenographer has to memorize more.
- Magnum) A theory that branched from StenEd long ago. Magnum is comprised almost entirely of briefs, making it very fast but memorization intensive. This theory was created and used by Mark Kislingbury, the Guinness World Record holder at 370 WPM.
This doesn't cover every theory out there, but most professional theories taught in schools are these four or branched theories from these four (I know some stenographer who learned RWG or EVO360 is out there glaring at me right now for not mentioning their theory).
In order to learn stenography, a student has to start with a theory. This isn't like some esoteric rule given just because; it's the nature of the beast. In order to learn how to form words on a machine, you need rules. And when you learn these rules, you are learning a theory. So in that case, is there one theory that's better than all the others? No.
// One Theory to Rule Them All
Theories are not one-size-fits-all. StenEd might be a great theory for a student who has good finger dexterity and doesn't like thinking abstractly or memorization, but another student might struggle with StenEd.
So, while Mark Kislingbury may have the world record for speed and accuracy using his Magnum theory, there are many students who have attended Mark's school that teaches Magnum who have failed and changed theories entirely because it was too difficult for them to learn while others flew through Magnum theory.
The best thing to consider when choosing a school or a theory is how you learn and what your strengths and weaknesses are.
But even then, most students don't stick completely with one theory, and most stenographers adapt new theories and concepts to their own over the years they work in the courts or in depositions.
All this is to say, your writing style never stagnates, and theories are just a starting point.
I changed the theory I was learning before I was done learning the theory. On top of that, the theory I was being taught was already a hybridization of StenEd/Phoenix/RWG/Magnum/and my teacher's own changes. So now my theory is something almost entirely new. And it will continue to change and grow. I currently add about 50-200 words per day to my steno dictionary. It has about 79,000 entries as of this post.
I think this is a good place to stop. Now that you have a basic understanding of theories, the next article will dig into briefs and conflicts a bit more, as they are a very unique and important feature of stenography.
I hope you enjoyed the read. As always, if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer anything in the comments or c-mail.
Until next time, stay curious.
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