ENTRY
[ESC]>> Stenography Primer [04] //
Hello, stenography explorers.
This is part four of the article series about stenography.
Conflicts and Briefs are the topics that will be covered today. This one should be exciting as you'll see how I cut down 32 strokes on a qwerty keyboard down to just 1 stroke on a steno machine.
// Phonetic Limitations
As described in [03] on theories, stenographers write phonetically. But this is only partially true. The trouble with English is that we have many words that similar but are written with varying spellings. Even if we write phonetically, we're still putting words down on the page, and we need ways of making these visual distinctions for a professional looking transcript (and so others know what the heck we're writing).
The low-hanging-fruit here are the common homonyms: there, their, they're.
Or even: where, wear, ware.
Phonetically, these word groups sound the same, but we can't write them all with the same stroke and expect them to be put on the page with the correct spelling. These variations are what we call conflicts in stenography. There are more kinds of conflicts, but let's start here for now. So how do we solve this?
While we could spell out the words, the simplest way is through briefs.
// Define: Brief
In stenography, a brief is a variation of writing that may or may not conform to a theory and may or may not resemble the word(s) the brief represents. That might be a little abstract, so let me give examples.
In my theory, there, their, and they're are written as follows:
- /THR (there)
- /TH-R (their)
- /THAEUR (they're)
Keeping in mind steno order as discussed in [02] and [03]; "there" is written with initial R (the R on the left hand), "their" is written with final R (R on the right hand).
As you can see, /THR and /TH-R are missing vowels. This goes against how a theory might tell you how to write these words. We do this because briefs are both necessary to solve conflicts, but also because if we create briefs for common words, we can free up the chord the word would've taken for something else.
// Phrases: Briefs Expanded
Shortening words isn't the only thing briefs can do. Take for instance this phrase:
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury"
In court reporting, we hear this phrase very often from attorneys and judges addressing the group of jurors. Let me first write this out in my theory to show you how long this is:
/HRAEDZ (ladies)
/SKP (and)
/SKWRE (gentlemen)
/F (of)
/-T (the)
/SKWRUR (jury)
That's 6 strokes to write that phrase. Not bad in comparison to the 32 strokes it would take on a qwerty keyboard. I also used briefs to keep the stroke count down. You can tell by the fact that some of these words do not resemble the full syllable count of the words represented.
But it's still too long when you have an attorney rattling off legalese at 240+ WPM, especially if the attorney is saying this over and over (they do that).
Let's write this phrase again, but we'll use a brief for the entire phrase because of how common it is:
- /HRAEURPBLG (ladies and gentlemen of the jury)
Look at how much better that is. One stroke.
This is why briefs are so powerful and why stenographers can write as fast as they do.
// Decoding Briefs
But what did I even write? /HRAEURPBLG? Can I even understand that?
Yes, actually. Here's how the brief is broken down:
HR = L
A = A
EU = I
R = R
PBLG = J
Basically, I wrote LAIRJ. When looking at it that way, maybe you can begin to see the vision for this brief. There's no direct translation happening here, no "one letter equals one word," at least not in this brief.
But if it helps to create a mnemonic device to remember this brief, you can approximate it like so:
LAE = Ladies
UR = Jury
J = Gentlemen
// Uncommon Solutions
Not all briefs need to make this much sense, and not all of them do. Sometimes you just need to write a word or phrase faster, and you need a brief that works.
Sometimes that even requires breaking steno order.
Yes, I lied about steno order too. To misquote Captain Barbossa, "Steno order is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules."
Take the word "lesson" for instance. This is a word that is very annoying. Not only is it a conflict by being a homonym of "lessen," it also does not neatly fit into steno order to get the word down to one stroke; and any briefs for it -- while adhering to steno order -- overlap with completely unrelated words who use a similar chord structure.
So it gets a new brief, and one that is not necessarily pretty:
/SHROPB (SLON)
Not only do we drop the E entirely, but we move the S to the front of the word. It hardly resembles its intended word at this point. Many briefs will throw a letter forward or backward within the word to make it easier to write. Which words do this and what theories "allow" this is all dependent on the stenographer.
Using the brief /SHROPB is my own solution to a problem I had. This might be entirely different than most other stenographers who may not have the same problem because they either will write the word in two strokes, or they gave "lesson" prime chord real estate.
// Conflict Resolution
English is full of word conflicts, and finding unique, efficient, and memorable solutions to these conflicts is what makes stenography what it is. All of us stenographers are trying to write faster.
The problem, however, is that briefs and breaking steno order can make a stenographer's writing illegible, even to themselves.
So there's a balance that needs to be struck between fewer strokes and legibility.
We'll stop here before I get into a rant that may or may not make sense to you... yet. We'll get you there, though. In due time.
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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