12 ms·

Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography

40 points by lemonade5117 5y ago

Hi, I just discovered what steno is and it seems really cool. Right now I am just blown away by how fast some stenographers can type. I am thinking of buying a Uni v3 but wondering if the amount of effort it’ll take to learn steno will be worth it. Does anyone here use steno for programming or just writing in general? If you do, do you have any tips on how to learn stenography faster? Thanks in advance.

geoah 5y ago
I love the idea of steno-like keyboards such as the gerkin, but I haven’t been able to go below 40 keys on a split keyboard myself without significantly changing my tools. My main editor for example (vscode) heavily uses modifier based shortcuts and with less keys the overlap of modifiers and normal characters is too high and becomes confusing for me. I already have basic characters mapped to modifiers, ie click for tab, hold for ctrl and click for space, hold for layer2. Moving to chord based shortcuts might help but that means completely changing both my input and ways of working at the same time.
- alpaca128 5y ago
  You don't need tiny keyboards for stenography, they just need n-key rollover and an ergonomic layout is a bonus. For me personally the sweet spot are 42 keys, much lower than that and I need to make a ton of compromises and the accuracy plummets. The problem is that putting modifier keys like Ctrl and Alt on normal letters is guaranteed to cause issues for certain key combinations unless you type really slowly. And I don't know how flexible VS Code is in terms of keybindings, but I like to use Space as a leader key for many of my additions. So instead of e.g. Ctrl-x I press Space followed by x. It can be still just as fast with some muscle memory.
not_the_nsa 5y ago
My grandfather, a teacher in peace times and Wehrmacht Lt in WWII, reportedly used steno to write notes on impossibly small pieces of paper. I guess the savings in paper suited his extremely frugal mindset, sharpened by the two world wars and two post-war periods he had to live through.
f_allwein 5y ago
Just learned that there are two different things, stenotype, which uses a special keyboard (mostly in the US?), and stenography, a form of hand writing, which some of the comments refer to. Interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand
- adrian_b 5y ago
  Obviously, stenotype is a relatively recent device, which has appeared later than standard typewriters, while various forms of stenographic hand writing have existed for more than 2 millennia, see e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironian_notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironian_notes
academia_hack 5y ago
Plover was great when in university and taking lecture classes. Let me keep up with lecturers and gave me a fun activity (learning steno) to keep me awake during boring lectures. Utterly useless for note taking as transcripts are really not great to study from, but what I'd do is come back at the end of the week and re-read all of my transcripts to create little study guides. Ended up working really well. Main downside is I didn't have the money to buy a chorded keyboard and steno on a normal laptop is really hard.
Phithagoras 5y ago
If you end up using it lots, making a cool tool, or having some epic disasters it could make a great Show HN or blog post!
tsuujin 5y ago
https://www.artofchording.com/ https://www.artofchording.com/ is your friend for getting started with steno. The plover discord is also a great resource. Learning steno theory can be intimidating, my recommendation is not to set a goal timeline for being “productive”. Put in a half hour a day and just take it one chord at a time. I own several steno specific keyboards, and the Uni is my least favorite. An EcoSteno seems just to be overall better if you want a solid body keyboard, but my preference is a Georgi if you can get ahold of one.
cjbprime 5y ago
I'm a fast qwerty typist (135wpm) who looked into steno but ultimately decided not to put the effort in to learning. I was surprised to discover that learning steno theory is much like learning a new foreign language due to the use of steno word dictionaries, and it takes most learners a few years of full-time study to get fast. (Of course, like with foreign languages, a small percentage of learners are able to go much faster.) I think I'd prefer to put effort into a chording system with more predictability and less memorization (I've heard that Velotype might be a good match). Or failing that, I'd rather learn an actual new foreign language :)
- loxias 5y ago
  Any advice on how to get from "fast for a normal" to "fast for a computer person" (like you)? I'm around 90wpm on a good day, but for the life of me can't break ~100. Always used to piss me off... my ex typed ~120 while I typed ~70wpm. Both of us engineers. Completely demolished me anytime we fought over chat. ;)
  - suby 5y ago
    This may not be your problem, but if you look at the keyboard while typing you need to stop. Other than that, you should look into using proper form. Make sure your fingers are resting where they should be when you're at rest. Make sure you're using the recommended fingers for each key on the keyboard. For example I used to press the Y key with my left index finger but it's quicker to press with the right index finger. Your keyboard can also make a big difference here. I don't have a recommendation on what keyboard to get but my typing speed suffers if I'm not using a good keyboard.
  - adamhp 5y ago
    I can approach 150-160, depending on the test. I think it's because I've been playing video games since I was 7 years old, before they had voice chat. In those early days, you did a lot of typing. I imagine it is similar to any other skill though. Practice. I'm sure there are web apps. You'd just have to put in some time each day for a period and you'd improve.
  - 5y ago
jrockway 5y ago
I started learning this week. Added a steno layer to my QMK-based keyboard, installed Plover, and off I went. I did some practice exercises, where it just shows you what keys to press to enter certain words, and tried that. I'm at about 5 words per minute. It's that hard to move my fingers to the right place and press them all down at once. I'm going to stick with it, but I can see why people require years of training before they become court reporters or whatever. Oh, and all these keyboards dedicated to steno that have like 12g activation force switches? I can see why they do that. I have 60g switches, and it's quite a bit of effort to press two keys with the same finger (which is often required). I might build myself a dedicated steno keyboard, and swap the sprints in the keys with something lighter.
xkfm 5y ago
No I don't like it because it's heavily encouraged that every stenographer heavily modify their dictionary, making it harder to learn. There's a million and one different theories, it's somewhat strange.
- alpaca128 5y ago
  It doesn't make it harder to learn, but easier for that specific person. Just like you change keyboard shortcuts and install plugins in tools you frequently use. Afaik stenography has some standard dictionaries that you can start out with. But as you said it's expected to modify it because everyone writes different kinds of texts and stenography is all about optimizing for speed.
  - xkfm 5y ago
    Most people have a few different shortcuts, steno is more like easily over a hundred, with different sets depending on the context you're working in. It makes sense for professionals going to court about x subject. I just found it needlessly annoying, especially when combined with the different theories and trying to find extra material to learn with. Depending on the resource, you also have to make sure it matches the theory plover is using. Plover isn't just learn this general theory and you're good to go. It's more like learn this theory, and you'll be able to type 85-95% of your sentence really fast. Also, whenever you get to word that's not in your dictionary, you go from typing say 150wpm to basically 0. It's pretty easy to make a command to toggle plover on and off to type normally (and also to quickly add a word), but when you have to do it almost every sentence, it gets old quick. Every time you switch to a new subject, you're probably going to have to add words to your dictionary for awhile. Squid Game just came out and you want to type the Koreans names, going to add new words. Your kid told you about this new game Roblox? New bundle of words. Supply chain just failed and you want to pretend you know what you're talking about and write comments about it on the internet? New bundle of words. This isn't an issue for professionals, but it's frustrating from an amateur prospective. Using plover is very binary. When it works, it's incredible, when it doesn't, it sucks.
elromulous 5y ago
I've been very intrigued by asetniop[1], but haven't had a chance to really try it. It's a chording keyboard (or rather, layout), and offers a more intuitive transition from qwerty. P.s. gboards has a board [2] (and qmk firmware) designed for it. [1] https://asetniop.com/ https://asetniop.com/ [2] https://www.gboards.ca/product/ginni https://www.gboards.ca/product/ginni
pabs3 5y ago
There is open software for stenography here: https://www.openstenoproject.org/ https://www.openstenoproject.org/
mdp2021 5y ago
Nice coincidence, the following was just submitted: Open Steno Project – freeing stenography https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29035644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29035644 > Traditionally, getting started with steno cost thousands of dollars. We enable anyone to learn stenography for free > The Open Steno Project [was] formed to support Plover and related projects
yellow_lead 5y ago
I don't use it. I consider thinking to be the bottleneck (or maneuvering in your IDE / terminal, if you're doing lots of refactoring, maybe)
singularity2001 5y ago
I sometimes use stenographic handwriting, which is different from the question. One insight I had is that swiping on the iPad is fundamentally faster than stenography, because the information density of these curves is higher: you have more context sensitive starting point and swirls. The only thing that is even faster is speech recognition (google > siri) ... and maybe the stenography OP asked about, which is probably not worth the learning curve given how ubiquitous speech recognition is becoming.
- mkl 5y ago
  I've been thinking about touch screen stenography too. I think it could be much better for you physically.
suby 5y ago
Before I got into programming I did stenography. I was able to type at 240+ WPM with 98+% accuracy, it took me about a year and a half to attain that speed. When I got into programming I sold my steno machine and haven't done anything related to it since. I'm sure there are some programmers or writers using stenography successfully, but I don't think it's practical personally. My bottleneck when programming is not typing speed but how quickly I can decide on what to type next. I can type at 130 WPM on a qwerty keyboard, it just is not a bottleneck. Moreover, it's not easy to learn. Assuming you're a decent typer on a regular keyboard, you are going to be slogging through typing for at least a year, and then who knows. Some people seem to be incapable of achieving the high speeds that you're seeing professionals reach. There were people at my school that were there for 4+ years, seemingly unable to reach the graduation speed/accuracy requirements despite practicing more than I ever did. The speeds are also misleading. People see 240+ WPM and think that's the end of it, but that speed and accuracy is typically measured differently than it should be. The WPM count does not typically include the proofreading and editing after the fact. Meaning you can have typos, you can leave words out, it's fine as long as you can properly decipher the typos / what was actually said based on context. There are stenography standards you can learn, but to actually achieve the speed you're looking for people end up making their own language constructs to shorten things (called briefs at my school). Maybe you're a court reporter and you hear a lot of phrases such as "Did there come a time" - you might shorten this entire sentence to one keystroke. Everyone ends up typing in their own bastardized version of the standard unique to them. I left stenography because I felt like it was destroying my body. It takes a toll on your hands, shoulders, body. Ultimately the entire process of getting good at stenography is very time consuming, I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze. Just my two cents, good luck to you if you do decide to pursue it.
jhanschoo 5y ago
Steno cannot help you be faster in programming. In addition to the added cognitive load, steno typing is a lossy map to natural speech, and you can expect it to be even worse for coding with all its unconventional typography.
SrZorro 5y ago
Maybe you can check out https://www.charachorder.com/ https://www.charachorder.com/ Its not a steno keyboard, but I think its better suited for programming and general writing. It has two modes, entry mode and chord mode: - In entry mode you press each key to make words like a normal keyboard. - In chord mode, you press multiple keys at the same time and the internal processor rewrites the word correctly or something like that. There are two types, CharaChorder and CharaChorder Lite: - The Lite its like a regular keyboard, but you can use the chord entry mode. - The original one instead of 1D keys, uses 4D keys that are like joysticks.

40 points by lemonade5117 5y ago

geoah 5y ago

I love the idea of steno-like keyboards such as the gerkin, but I haven’t been able to go below 40 keys on a split keyboard myself without significantly changing my tools. My main editor for example (vscode) heavily uses modifier based shortcuts and with less keys the overlap of modifiers and normal characters is too high and becomes confusing for me. I already have basic characters mapped to modifiers, ie click for tab, hold for ctrl and click for space, hold for layer2. Moving to chord based shortcuts might help but that means completely changing both my input and ways of working at the same time.

alpaca128 5y ago
You don't need tiny keyboards for stenography, they just need n-key rollover and an ergonomic layout is a bonus. For me personally the sweet spot are 42 keys, much lower than that and I need to make a ton of compromises and the accuracy plummets. The problem is that putting modifier keys like Ctrl and Alt on normal letters is guaranteed to cause issues for certain key combinations unless you type really slowly. And I don't know how flexible VS Code is in terms of keybindings, but I like to use Space as a leader key for many of my additions. So instead of e.g. Ctrl-x I press Space followed by x. It can be still just as fast with some muscle memory.

not_the_nsa 5y ago

My grandfather, a teacher in peace times and Wehrmacht Lt in WWII, reportedly used steno to write notes on impossibly small pieces of paper. I guess the savings in paper suited his extremely frugal mindset, sharpened by the two world wars and two post-war periods he had to live through.

f_allwein 5y ago

Just learned that there are two different things, stenotype, which uses a special keyboard (mostly in the US?), and stenography, a form of hand writing, which some of the comments refer to. Interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand

adrian_b 5y ago
Obviously, stenotype is a relatively recent device, which has appeared later than standard typewriters, while various forms of stenographic hand writing have existed for more than 2 millennia, see e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironian_notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironian_notes

academia_hack 5y ago

Plover was great when in university and taking lecture classes. Let me keep up with lecturers and gave me a fun activity (learning steno) to keep me awake during boring lectures. Utterly useless for note taking as transcripts are really not great to study from, but what I'd do is come back at the end of the week and re-read all of my transcripts to create little study guides. Ended up working really well. Main downside is I didn't have the money to buy a chorded keyboard and steno on a normal laptop is really hard.

Phithagoras 5y ago

If you end up using it lots, making a cool tool, or having some epic disasters it could make a great Show HN or blog post!

tsuujin 5y ago

https://www.artofchording.com/ https://www.artofchording.com/ is your friend for getting started with steno. The plover discord is also a great resource. Learning steno theory can be intimidating, my recommendation is not to set a goal timeline for being “productive”. Put in a half hour a day and just take it one chord at a time. I own several steno specific keyboards, and the Uni is my least favorite. An EcoSteno seems just to be overall better if you want a solid body keyboard, but my preference is a Georgi if you can get ahold of one.

cjbprime 5y ago

I'm a fast qwerty typist (135wpm) who looked into steno but ultimately decided not to put the effort in to learning. I was surprised to discover that learning steno theory is much like learning a new foreign language due to the use of steno word dictionaries, and it takes most learners a few years of full-time study to get fast. (Of course, like with foreign languages, a small percentage of learners are able to go much faster.) I think I'd prefer to put effort into a chording system with more predictability and less memorization (I've heard that Velotype might be a good match). Or failing that, I'd rather learn an actual new foreign language :)

loxias 5y ago
Any advice on how to get from "fast for a normal" to "fast for a computer person" (like you)? I'm around 90wpm on a good day, but for the life of me can't break ~100. Always used to piss me off... my ex typed ~120 while I typed ~70wpm. Both of us engineers. Completely demolished me anytime we fought over chat. ;)
- suby 5y ago
  This may not be your problem, but if you look at the keyboard while typing you need to stop. Other than that, you should look into using proper form. Make sure your fingers are resting where they should be when you're at rest. Make sure you're using the recommended fingers for each key on the keyboard. For example I used to press the Y key with my left index finger but it's quicker to press with the right index finger. Your keyboard can also make a big difference here. I don't have a recommendation on what keyboard to get but my typing speed suffers if I'm not using a good keyboard.
- adamhp 5y ago
  I can approach 150-160, depending on the test. I think it's because I've been playing video games since I was 7 years old, before they had voice chat. In those early days, you did a lot of typing. I imagine it is similar to any other skill though. Practice. I'm sure there are web apps. You'd just have to put in some time each day for a period and you'd improve.
- 5y ago

jrockway 5y ago

I started learning this week. Added a steno layer to my QMK-based keyboard, installed Plover, and off I went. I did some practice exercises, where it just shows you what keys to press to enter certain words, and tried that. I'm at about 5 words per minute. It's that hard to move my fingers to the right place and press them all down at once. I'm going to stick with it, but I can see why people require years of training before they become court reporters or whatever. Oh, and all these keyboards dedicated to steno that have like 12g activation force switches? I can see why they do that. I have 60g switches, and it's quite a bit of effort to press two keys with the same finger (which is often required). I might build myself a dedicated steno keyboard, and swap the sprints in the keys with something lighter.

xkfm 5y ago

No I don't like it because it's heavily encouraged that every stenographer heavily modify their dictionary, making it harder to learn. There's a million and one different theories, it's somewhat strange.

alpaca128 5y ago
It doesn't make it harder to learn, but easier for that specific person. Just like you change keyboard shortcuts and install plugins in tools you frequently use. Afaik stenography has some standard dictionaries that you can start out with. But as you said it's expected to modify it because everyone writes different kinds of texts and stenography is all about optimizing for speed.
- xkfm 5y ago
  Most people have a few different shortcuts, steno is more like easily over a hundred, with different sets depending on the context you're working in. It makes sense for professionals going to court about x subject. I just found it needlessly annoying, especially when combined with the different theories and trying to find extra material to learn with. Depending on the resource, you also have to make sure it matches the theory plover is using. Plover isn't just learn this general theory and you're good to go. It's more like learn this theory, and you'll be able to type 85-95% of your sentence really fast. Also, whenever you get to word that's not in your dictionary, you go from typing say 150wpm to basically 0. It's pretty easy to make a command to toggle plover on and off to type normally (and also to quickly add a word), but when you have to do it almost every sentence, it gets old quick. Every time you switch to a new subject, you're probably going to have to add words to your dictionary for awhile. Squid Game just came out and you want to type the Koreans names, going to add new words. Your kid told you about this new game Roblox? New bundle of words. Supply chain just failed and you want to pretend you know what you're talking about and write comments about it on the internet? New bundle of words. This isn't an issue for professionals, but it's frustrating from an amateur prospective. Using plover is very binary. When it works, it's incredible, when it doesn't, it sucks.

elromulous 5y ago

I've been very intrigued by asetniop[1], but haven't had a chance to really try it. It's a chording keyboard (or rather, layout), and offers a more intuitive transition from qwerty. P.s. gboards has a board [2] (and qmk firmware) designed for it. [1] https://asetniop.com/ https://asetniop.com/ [2] https://www.gboards.ca/product/ginni https://www.gboards.ca/product/ginni

pabs3 5y ago

There is open software for stenography here: https://www.openstenoproject.org/ https://www.openstenoproject.org/

mdp2021 5y ago

Nice coincidence, the following was just submitted: Open Steno Project – freeing stenography https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29035644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29035644 > Traditionally, getting started with steno cost thousands of dollars. We enable anyone to learn stenography for free > The Open Steno Project [was] formed to support Plover and related projects

yellow_lead 5y ago

I don't use it. I consider thinking to be the bottleneck (or maneuvering in your IDE / terminal, if you're doing lots of refactoring, maybe)

singularity2001 5y ago

I sometimes use stenographic handwriting, which is different from the question. One insight I had is that swiping on the iPad is fundamentally faster than stenography, because the information density of these curves is higher: you have more context sensitive starting point and swirls. The only thing that is even faster is speech recognition (google > siri) ... and maybe the stenography OP asked about, which is probably not worth the learning curve given how ubiquitous speech recognition is becoming.

mkl 5y ago
I've been thinking about touch screen stenography too. I think it could be much better for you physically.

suby 5y ago

Before I got into programming I did stenography. I was able to type at 240+ WPM with 98+% accuracy, it took me about a year and a half to attain that speed. When I got into programming I sold my steno machine and haven't done anything related to it since. I'm sure there are some programmers or writers using stenography successfully, but I don't think it's practical personally. My bottleneck when programming is not typing speed but how quickly I can decide on what to type next. I can type at 130 WPM on a qwerty keyboard, it just is not a bottleneck. Moreover, it's not easy to learn. Assuming you're a decent typer on a regular keyboard, you are going to be slogging through typing for at least a year, and then who knows. Some people seem to be incapable of achieving the high speeds that you're seeing professionals reach. There were people at my school that were there for 4+ years, seemingly unable to reach the graduation speed/accuracy requirements despite practicing more than I ever did. The speeds are also misleading. People see 240+ WPM and think that's the end of it, but that speed and accuracy is typically measured differently than it should be. The WPM count does not typically include the proofreading and editing after the fact. Meaning you can have typos, you can leave words out, it's fine as long as you can properly decipher the typos / what was actually said based on context. There are stenography standards you can learn, but to actually achieve the speed you're looking for people end up making their own language constructs to shorten things (called briefs at my school). Maybe you're a court reporter and you hear a lot of phrases such as "Did there come a time" - you might shorten this entire sentence to one keystroke. Everyone ends up typing in their own bastardized version of the standard unique to them. I left stenography because I felt like it was destroying my body. It takes a toll on your hands, shoulders, body. Ultimately the entire process of getting good at stenography is very time consuming, I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze. Just my two cents, good luck to you if you do decide to pursue it.

jhanschoo 5y ago

Steno cannot help you be faster in programming. In addition to the added cognitive load, steno typing is a lossy map to natural speech, and you can expect it to be even worse for coding with all its unconventional typography.

SrZorro 5y ago

Maybe you can check out https://www.charachorder.com/ https://www.charachorder.com/ Its not a steno keyboard, but I think its better suited for programming and general writing. It has two modes, entry mode and chord mode: - In entry mode you press each key to make words like a normal keyboard. - In chord mode, you press multiple keys at the same time and the internal processor rewrites the word correctly or something like that. There are two types, CharaChorder and CharaChorder Lite: - The Lite its like a regular keyboard, but you can use the chord entry mode. - The original one instead of 1D keys, uses 4D keys that are like joysticks.