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Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography

40 points by lemonade5117 ↗ HN
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.

33 comments

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geoah
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
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.

Phithagoras
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
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.

not_the_nsa
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.
cjbprime
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
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. ;)

cjbprime
No advice, sorry! It's a rare example (for me) of having a skill despite never having actively worked at improving it, and my touch typing form is not good even though the speed is high. I had a lot of classical guitar lessons as a teenager and that seems more likely to be related than anything else. Would be curious to hear whether the correlation with being an instrumentalist shows up for other people too.

Well, maybe one piece of advice for a small boost in speed -- I got into mechanical keyboards for a few years, and eventually had to conclude that full height keys slow me down a lot compared to cheap laptop chiclet keyboards, so eventually I swapped back to using those.

loxias
Hah, it's okay :) I'm the opposite -- a large number of the things I have some above average skill at, I honestly never worked at improving, it just... happened. So I empathize with "no idea how to share" :)

FWIW I also did 8 years of music as a kid (mostly woodwinds).

I don't look at the keys, and I _think_ my form is okay but I have no idea. I, too, never learned the "right" way, I've just been typing on a keyboard for ~75% of my life so over time it got faster.

One thing I notice when I compare my typing to people who are >90wpm is the sound is different. My typing sounds very "staccato", whereas you lucky fast people... it seems to sound quieter? smoother?

shrug face

suby
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.
throwamon
If you have some spare time, maybe try learning a new keyboard layout and be intent on learning the right fingering. I never properly learned to use all my fingers on QWERTY, but I picked up Carpalx[1] and with 1h a day of deliberate practice on TypeRacer and keybr.com[2] I managed to get to the same speed I've always typed on QWERTY (~70-90 WPM) after about a week. Since then I haven't really practiced that much and progress has definitely slowed down but I still "naturally" got slightly faster than I was (I occasionally reach 120 WPM) and I always do see a tiny improvement when I practice again. It's also interesting that due to using fingers differently I can easily mentally switch between "QWERTY mode" and "Carpalx mode", it's something I can feel, sort of like playing two different instruments.

[1] Sort of an obscure one, but there's a good reason to learn it! http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/

[2] A warning though, you may become addicted to these games :)

loxias
> http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/

Link is dead, but it's in archive.org. Thanks for that! Really cool. I love the idea of using a model driven approach. That link is gold.

Yeah, I considered learning dvorak in the early 2000s, when it was spreading like wildfire through my social group. I decided not too after having several friends gripe about the annoyance of typing on a qwerty keyboard after going dvorak.

But, it's 2021 now. I can't remember the last time I typed on a computer I didn't control! So maybe now it's time to switch to a custom key layout, entirely data driven by sampling my key presses over a few months. :)

throwamon
> Link is dead

I actually visited it before posting (and did again now), but just a minute later I sneakily edited the "http" in because the first time I typed "https" and the website wouldn't load, could that be it? They've even added another layout to the "layouts analysis" page 4 days ago!

Btw, you don't need to have a 100% customized layout, you can use one of the pre-optimized presets.

Anyway, definitely try it out, the worst that can happen is you won't feel safe anymore leaving the house without a flash card with AutoHotkey.

loxias
> ... could that be it?

Yup! Apparently my browser is "helpfully" rewriting HTTP URLs to be HTTPS, what could possibly go wrong? facepalm False alarm, sorry...

adamhp
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.

GianFabien
I don't touch type as fast as you do (only 80-110wpm) but I too was tempted by the idea of faster typing. I have experimented with several chording keyboards and could never get past 15-20 wpm range. My problem is that I have been typing on QWERTY keyboards for decades and my limiting factor is not my typing speed, but my thinking speed. When coding, I hardly ever can go for more than a couple of minutes before I need to cross-reference something, flip to a different file, check another part of the file, etc. That is what really limits my output, not the actual typing speed.

People who have tried Dvorak keyboards find it difficult when they need to work away from their personal desktop / notebook. I got far more value out of simply learning to touch type well. That is never having to look at the keyboard - eyes on the screen at all times.

codefined
Have you tried practicing specifically to improve your typing speed on QWERTY keyboards? I started doing ~10 minutes of typing tests a day using MonkeyType[0] and KeyMash[1] and can now pretty reliably type 200+ WPM.

Lots of people try out Workman / Dvorak / Colemak, but I see very few top typists using custom keyboard layouts. You can definitely.

[0] https://keyma.sh/ [1] https://monkeytype.com/

jrockway
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
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
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
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.

f_allwein
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/Shorthand

mdp2021
Nice coincidence, the following was just submitted:

Open Steno Project – freeing stenography 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
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
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
I've been thinking about touch screen stenography too. I think it could be much better for you physically.
suby
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.

academia_hack
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.
jhanschoo
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
Maybe you can check out 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.