MACHINE SHORTHAND

BASICS

This section has been created to teach you how you can use a QWERTY keyboard for
Stenography and to give you a good foundation of Stenography basics.

Topics covered in this section:

 How Stenography works

Lessons – BASIC

 Introduction
 The vowels
 STPR
 Left hand keys
 Right hand keys
 Left hand chords 1
 Right hand chords
 Left hand chords 2

Introduction

Machine Stenography is the art of using a specialist machine in order to write at very fast
speeds very accurately. This is achieved by writing syllables, words or even entire phrases in a
single hand motion.

As a comparison, a fast QWERTY typist will be able to type at around 80 words per minute
whereas a fast stenographer will be able to write around 260 words per minute.

The speed of human speech in the English language is around 180 words per minute so
stenography can be used to type speech in realtime. Alternatively, stenography can be used to
write down your own thoughts as fast as you can think them!
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During a single hand motion on a steno keyboard, multiple keys are pressed at once. When
these keys are released, the steno software outputs the word, syllable or phrase that was typed.
This is called one "stroke" or "chord".

During one stroke on a steno keyboard, the hands are performing the following functions:

 The left hand types the initial consonant of the syllable

The word "stop" can be written by typing "ST" with the left hand, "O" with the left thumb and "P"
with the right hand. These keys would be pressed all at the same time and the word is written
when all the keys are released.

As you may have noticed, the steno keyboard has less keys than a conventional keyboard. Not
all the letters of the alphabet are represented on the steno keys so in order to type the missing
letters, we use combinations of other letters. This will be covered in a later lesson.

THE VOWELS

At the heart of every syllable is a vowel.

The vowels in steno are written using the thumbs. As you can see below, there are 4 keys that
relate to vowels on a steno keyboard.

We'll break the vowels up into groups.

Short:
Keys Example

A Mat, Ant

O Got, Pocket

E Let, Fed

U Grump, Bull

EU Grip, Pit

Notice how you make the vowel "I" by pressing both "E" and "U" together.

These five vowels all have "long" versions. The way to make the long version of the vowel is to
add the two vowel keys from the other hand.

For example, you can press "A" to make a short "A" as in "cap". If you add the vowels from the
other hand ("E" and "U"), you get a long "A" as in "cape"

This works for all vowels except "O" which is written "OE".

Long:

Keys Example

AEU Grape, Hay

AOE Free

AOU Glue

AOEU Pipe, Eye

OE Show, Joe

Can you see how you add the vowels of the other hand in order to make a vowel long? This is
an easy way of remembering it, just watch out for the exception: "O".
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Diphthongs:
Keys Example

OEU Toy, Joy

AU Bought, Faun, All

OU How, Mound

And finally...

Spelling Differentiators:
Keys Usage

AO Spelling "oo" or "oa"

AE Spelling "ea" or "ae"

An example of using spelling differentiators would be when two words sound the same but you
need the steno software to output the correct word. For example when writing "Pair" or "Pear".
Both of these words sound the same and would be written phonetically on a steno keyboard as
"PAEUR". But the steno software can only output one word. In this case the output would be
"Pair". So in order to write "Pear", we use the spelling differentiator and write "PAER".

While steno is mostly phonetic, sometimes it uses spelling to inform how to write a word. So if a
word is written with a short vowel, it will usually be written with the same vowel on the steno
keyboard, regardless of what it actually sounds like. For example, "Pert" and "Purr" have the
same sound, but "Pert" is written with the "E" key, and "Purr" is written with the "U" key.

STPR

The steno keyboard has some letters that appear as keys on the left that don't appear as keys
on the right. It has some letters that appear as keys on the right that don't appear as keys on the
left. However, there are four letters that appear on both sides. These will be the first consonants
we will learn.
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S:

S is under the pinky fingers.

P:

P is on the top row under the middle fingers.

R:

R is on the bottom row under the index fingers.

Left T is under the ring finger. Right T is under the pinky finger.

Left Hand Keys

Here are all the keys for the left hand.

Right Hand Keys

Here are all the keys for the right hand.

Hint: T and D are often grouped together in phonetics because they both come from the same
part of the mouth. On the right side of the keyboard these two keys are pressed by the same
finger.

The same applies to S and Z. These are very similar sounds and on the right side of the
keyboard they are pressed by the same finger.
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Left Hand Chorded Letters - Part 1

D:

Hint: D and T are phonetically similar.

B:

Hint: B and P are phonetically similar.

L:

Q:

Hint: Q is KW. Instead of "Queen", think "kween".

F:
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V:

M:

X:

Right Hand Chorded Letters

M:

K:
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X:

Hint: X is KS. Instead of "Box", think "boks".

N:

J:

Left Hand Chorded Letters - Part 2

N:

Y:
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G:

J:

Z:

C: