MACHINE SHORTHAND

INTERMEDIATE

This section has been created in order to expand your knowledge from steno basics onto a
working knowledge that can be applied when using steno software for real text output.

Topics covered in this section:

 Word beginnings
 Word endings
 Short forms
 Punctuation
 How to deal with words that sound alike
 How to spell words letter by letter if necessary
 How to increase your speed when writing common phrases
 Numbers

Lessons – INTERMEDIATE

 Word Beginnings
 Word Endings
 Briefs
 Punctuation
 Homophones
 Fingerspelling
 Common Phrases
 Numbers

Word Beginnings
If a word or syllable begins with more than one consonant you can include all of those
consonants in the one stroke. The left hand side of the steno keyboard is designed specifically
to cater for multiple consonants working together.
For example: It is extremely rare in English for another consonant to preceed an "S" at the
beginning of a word so it is placed at the far left of the keyboard. An "S" can be followed by a "T"
so it is placed to the right of "S", but not too far, because several letters can follow "T" such as
"H", "R" and "W". You can see how beautifully the steno keyboard has been design around the
sounds of the English language.
In the case that the word begins with a letter that isn't on the steno keyboard, simply use the
chord as learnt in the Basics section.
For example: "SM" is made by pressing "S" and the chord for "M".
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Here are a few examples of word beginnings.

Letters Steno

SC SK

ST ST

TH TH

WH WH

FR TPR

FL TPHR

BL PWHR

Word Endings
In the simplest case, writing the end of a word or syllable simply involves pressing the key or
chord that relates to the sound of the end of the word.
For Example: "Big" ends in a "G" so you press the "G" key with the right hand.
However there are a few shortcuts that can save you a lot of strokes in the long run. One
example would be the very common ending "tion". There is no need to type this as a whole
extra syllable, you can use the right hand keys "G" and "S" instead.
Unfortunately the right hand side of the keyboard is not quite as straight forward as the left hand
side. Sometimes certain letters are substituted for others.
For Example: "F" is often used as a substitute for "S" when another consonant follows. Cases
like "Fast" (FAFT) and "Kissing" (KIFG).
"F" is also used to represent "V". Sometimes you will have to use the asterisk key to
differentiate between a word that ends with "F" and a word that ends with "V". "Strife"
(STRAOEUF) and "Strive" (STRAO*EUF)

Here is a list of the most common word endings:

Ending Steno Example

st FT Fast (FAFT)

th *T Bath (PWA*T)

mp *PL Lamp (HRA*PL)

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Ending Steno Example

lk *LG Milk (PH*EULG)

ch / tch FP Catch, Screech

sh RB Cash

'shus' (tious / cious) RBS Precious

'shun' (tion / sion etc..) GS Fashion, Notion

'kshun' (ction) BGS Function, Auction (AUBGS)

rch / nch FRPB Perch, Bench

dge PBLG Edge

ds DZ Friends

Briefs
Although stenography is predominantly phonetic, not all words are written completely
phonetically syllable by syllable. The most regularly occurring words often have shortcut ways of
being written. These shortcuts are often just a single stroke of the keyboard for a word or phrase
that may have otherwise taken multiple strokes. These shortcuts are called "Briefs".
There are no practice drills specifically for Briefs on this website because there are simply so
many. Instead, the Practice section contains practice drills for the most common words in
English, a lot of these words have brief forms which we advise learning over the phonetic
versions.
Good use of Briefs will make your writing quicker and save you thousands (if not millions) of
strokes over your steno lifetime.
Briefs are usually made to sound similar to the full word or phrase they represent. A good Brief
will be easy to remember.
For Example: The phrase "as much as" can be written in a single stroke "SPHUFPS". This may
seem nothing like the original phrase but if we dissect it, it actually writes "S-MUCH-S".
Other shortcuts exist, which aren't exactly briefs, but have a purpose (to make your writing
quicker and easier).
Sometimes entire syllables can be stripped out of a word by using clever letter placement. An
example of this would be the word "compression" (three syllables). This can be written as
"KPREGS" (one stroke). The use of "KPR" as the initial consonants consolidates two syllables
into one. Also notice the use of "GS" as "tion" which was mentioned in an earlier lesson. This
removes another syllable.
Another example would be the word "belief" which can be written as "PWHRAOEF" ("bleef")
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Homophones
Sometimes two words sound the same. How can we differentiate between them so our steno
software can output the correct word?
There are a number of ways we can do this. The most common is to use the asterisk key in the
middle of the keyboard (usually pressed with the right index finger).
Another common way is to alter the vowel that's used, or resort to the spelling of the word. A
good example of this is "to" (TO), "two" (TWO) and "too" (TAO)
You can also use the spelling differentiators as mentioned in the Vowels lesson. For example:
"Pair" (PAUER) and "Pear" (PAER).

Fingerspelling
Sometimes it may be necessary to spell out a word letter by letter. This is known as
Fingerspelling. Please note that this should only be used as a last resort as it will be a lot slower
than normal steno writing. If you need to write a word that is not defined in the dictionary of your
steno software, you should only have to fingerspell it once when you add it to the dictionary.
After this time you can use proper steno strokes to write that word. All good steno software will
have tools for defining a new entry in your dictionary and Plover is no exception.
As you may have noticed, the left hand side of the steno keyboard is the only side that has a
key or chord for every letter of the alphabet. We use the left hand side for Fingerspelling.
In order to write a lower case letter, simply use the left hand side key or chord for the required
letter in conjuction with the asterisk key.
For Example: To write a lower case "T" you would stroke "T*". To write a lower case "Q" you
would stroke "KW*".
If you require the upper case version of the letter, simply follow the above method but add the
"P" key from the right hand side.
For Example: To write "T" you would stroke "T*P". To write "Q" you would stroke "KW*P".
If you require the upper case version of the letter followed by a dot, follow the basic method but
add the keys "F", "P", "L" and "T" from the right hand side.
For Example: To write "T." you would stroke "T*FPLT". To write "Q." you would stroke
"KW*FPLT".
Finally, if you want to write a dash after the lower case version of the letter, use the left hand
side key or chord for the required letter in conjuction with the keys "P", "L" and "T" from the right
hand side.
For Example: To write "t-" you would stroke "T-PLT". To write "q-" you would stroke "KW-PLT".
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Common Phrases
In steno you can sometimes write entire phrases using a single stroke. This can save you
strokes and make your writing much quicker.
An example of this would be the stroke for "of" (-F) and the stroke for "the" (-T) can be
combined into "of the" (-FT).
Another example would be the phrase "as soon as possible" which can be written as "STPHOP"
("snop")

Numbers
Just above the top row of letters on a steno machine are a set of keys (or a single very wide
key) called the Number Bar.
Pressing any of these keys will turn the stroke into a number stroke. This means your steno
software will treat the top row of letters as numbers instead. The number 5 and number 0 can
be found on the A and O keys respectively.
Here is an illustration of the number keys on the steno keyboard:

In steno, you can type multiple numbers in one stroke when the numbers are in order (from left
to right). For example you can write 123456789 in one stroke by pressing STPRAFPLT along
with any of the number bar keys.
By pressing the "E" and "U" keys when writing a number stroke you can invert the order of the
numbers (right to left). So you can write 41 in one stroke by pressing "S" and "H" along with any
of the number bar keys.
By adding the "D" key to a single digit stroke it will double the number. For example "33", "55"
etc..
By adding the "Z" key to a single digit stroke it will add two zeroes to the number. For example
"300", "500" etc..