How do court reporters type so fast?

📓 The short answer

Court reporters transcribe proceedings based using a shorthand code for the phonetic sound of each syllable, rather than typing one keystroke for every letter.

📚 The long answer

Court reporters are trained to use a stenograph, which has a special keyboard with only 22 keys. The keys on the left are used to type the first letter of a syllable of a word, the keys on the right are used for the last letter of the syllable, and vowel keys are on the bottom row. There is also a bar on the top of the stenograph used to type numbers.

A stenographer usually presses three or more keys simultaneously (known as "chords") for each syllable or sound of a word. Take "STOP," for example. A stenographer would type S and T on the left side because that's the first part of the word, O on the bottom for the vowel, and P on the right because it's the ending sound of the word.

But with only 22 keys, there are clearly some letters and sounds missing. To accommodate for that, stenographers will use different combinations of letters to note a missing letter.

For example, if they want to type a syllable that starts or ends with M, they will type P and H together. And since vowels don't sound the same in every word (e.g. "bAt" with a short A sound; and "bAit" with a long A sound), there are codes for those sounds as well. When all these codes are used, the shorthand looks nonsensical, but it makes sense to a trained stenographer.

To make the process even faster, stenographers often program their own abbreviations for commonly used phrases, like "May it please the court."

Stenographs are often hooked up to a computer that contains special software which does the job of translating the shorthand into a readable transcript. Court reporters will then review the computer's translation for accuracy before submitting the official record.

Sources

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