This Test Left Me Befuddled
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- Join the Plover Discord server if you want to learn steno: / discord
The convoluted explication endeavors to portray his penchant for employing sesquipedalian diction, entwined with the confounding interplay of discombobulation and quixotic tonality during the enactment of a mellifluous defenestration. Alas, the ostentatious intricacy embedded within this description elicits a lamentation for the apparent convolution, as the complexity woven into the linguistic fabric seemingly obfuscates the intended message, leaving me grappling with the unintended consequence of cognitive befuddlement.
Join the Plover Discord server if you want to learn steno: discord.gg/NAzMz7C3wq
The convoluted explication endeavors to portray his penchant for employing sesquipedalian diction, entwined with the confounding interplay of discombobulation and quixotic tonality during the enactment of a mellifluous defenestration. Alas, the ostentatious intricacy embedded within this description elicits a lamentation for the apparent convolution, as the complexity woven into the linguistic fabric seemingly obfuscates the intended message, leaving me grappling with the unintended consequence of cognitive befuddlement.
I type 90-110wpm with 99% accuracy on QWERTY. It varies between different tests of course.
I have wrist issues however (much more noticeable with activities like hand writing or racket sports which are impossible for me sustained, but I still feel some pain after typing for long periods of time). Alternate key layouts felt like a hard sell because I would have to spend a long time to hit wpm that would very likely be similar or lower than my QWERTY speeds.
I just recently found about plover and steno and the value prop actually sounds good enough to be worth considering. Based on your progress (though you could just be talented) it seems like it could become a replacement writing tool fairly quickly, with a reasonable shot at surpassing my current writing speed.
Questions if you have the time. You could just pick which ones you have interest in answering:
1) Do you feel much difference in terms of wrist strain assuming that you ever experienced much of that with either layout
2) Under what circumstances do you still go back to QWERTY? If none then what were the last types of tasks you were doing with QWERTY before you fully swapped over and why?
3) Do you regret the swap at all.
4) You called it a hobby in the first video I saw (the 5 month journey). Is that no longer the case and now you consider it how you write?
5) Assuming you write more in this than QWERTY how badly has it impacted your ability to use QWERTY? Like wpm drop off would be a good benchmark.
6) How often do you need to add dictionary items or redefine them? How much time do you practically end up spending in the writing process doing this? How long was it before the dictionary mostly behaved.
7) It seems most plover and steno examples I see online with absurd wpm are of stock phrases being practiced or repeated which kind of defeats the purpose. When doing random text like in a speed competition how much does your steno performance exceed your old QWERTY performance on average?
8) How disruptive to the writing process is non standard text. That is where you need to use a lot of symbols (complex grammar, or even coding) or typing numbers in quick succession like when typing out addresses, cc numbers, phone numbers, math, etc.
9) Do you regret the time investment? If not do you see it as something that meaningfully improved your experience, or just something you found fun.
10) Of course when scribing work you can target infinite wpm. But how often does the improved wpm actually let you better keep up with your train of thought? Do you feel like the bottleneck is how quickly you language process or how quickly you type? I'm guessing the later since spoken language is so fast. Does your average steno typing now exceed the rate at which you think? Do you feel you can better formulate and build ideas as a result of being able to better keep up with your train of thought? Basically anything about the mental experience once you reach a higher wpm level.
Sorry for all the questions. This is the first typing technology that's looked legitimately exciting to me. But if it's gonna take 100 hours of practice just to stop feeling painful to use I want to have a better of idea of what someone who's been willing to show their experience feels about these topics. So I'd really appreciate whatever you could get back to me on. It's a little daunting to swap off QWERTY because I'm pretty proficient with it and don't want to degrade my muscle memory only to find out steno only can be used in some use cases for me or never gets very fast. There's a lot of stories of people swapping key layouts and then finding it wasn't really any better once they got proficient. But this looks fundamentally different so it's exciting.
(1) I definitely prefer writing with steno over longer periods of time. It's much easier on the wrists and fingers too. However, when it comes to wrist issues, it's really personal and steno isn't necessarily going to help. I know of people who have benefited greatly from learning steno, but I also know of people who have had their pain flare up when writing with steno.
(2) My steno keyboard is the only keyboard at my PC, but I often use my laptop a lot so it's maybe 50/50 steno and QWERTY. Though, if my laptop had a viable steno keyboard, I would absolutely be using that. I work in telecom/construction engineering, and a lot of my job involves data entry of single characters, so steno would get in the way there. It is definitely possible to create a tailored system with dictionaries just for those tasks, but it's more effort than it's really worth, so I haven't bothered.
(3) & (4) To me, steno is a hobby that I enjoy and have fun with. Being faster and more comfortable than a QWERTY keyboard is really just a bonus to me. I don't regret learning it in the same way I don't regret learning a musical instrument-even if I don't actively play anymore. If you want to learn steno, I'd recommend learning it as a hobby. If you focus too much on results, you may end up burning out or finding out that it's not for you too late in the journey. Some people don't ever surpass their typing speeds.
(5) Learning steno has not affected by QWERTY capability at all. My steno speed and QWERTY speed are not related at all. For a very small fraction of people (I've only heard from one or two), steno has made their speed drop by about 10 to 20%. From what I understand, this is mostly just from being confused with the layout and having to take a few seconds to readjust.
(6) Stenographers such as myself are constantly adding entries to their dictionary. In writing this whole piece, I haven't come across anything so far, but tailoring your own dictionary is an essential part of stenography. I definitely add at least one entry everyday. It takes me about 5 seconds to do so. If something is missing from my dictionary, I'll just fingerspell (a technique to write something out letter-by-letter), and then add an entry afterwards. I can't say how long it took me until my dictionary was mostly behaved, especially as I built the Lapwing dictionary from scratch in early 2022 for about 6 months. If you're learning Lapwing, you will already have a working starter dictionary, and for most things (such as what I've written here so far), it will be perfectly adequate. You may occasionally find entries missing, or you may disagree with how a certain word is written, and that is when you'd want to tweak your dictionary.
(7) I haven't practised much recently, but last week when I spent about 15 minutes on TypeRacer I averaged about 200 WPM. On a QWERTY keyboard it would have been about 100 WPM.
(8) I code with steno, and a lot of people do as well. Steno is very flexible and can write anything that a regular keyboard can output (and even more such as emoji and nonstandard unicode characters). The issue is just learning the systems that allow you to do these things. Replacing your keyboard with steno requires a lot of effort because you need to basically learn several systems: you need separate systems for writing English, symbols, shortcuts, numbers, and more (depending on your needs). That being said, some of these systems are quite simplistic and they can easily mesh together without conflicting with each other. The system I use for numbers is just a numberpad like you'd find on a calculator, so entering in phone numbers, for example, is a breeze. I also have a dictionary for writing math equations with LaTeX quite easily, and I much prefer steno over typing in this scenario. I have a video covering the systems that I use: ua-cam.com/video/pW647nfzXLk/v-deo.html .
(9) Same answer to (3) & (4). I don't regret it; it's fun, I've gotten use out of it, and I love contributing to the steno community by creating various resources.
(10) My steno speed is definitely faster than my thinking speed. It's taken at least 20 minutes to write all of this out because I've had to stop and think about what I want to say. That said, I do think I would feel quite bottlenecked if I had to write this all out with QWERTY, especially as editing text with a regular keyboard is quite cumbersome. My capacity to formulate new thoughts is definitely increased when I use steno and are not bottlenecked by slower typing speeds.
Last thoughts:
Getting to 100 WPM or so is definitely going to take at least 100 hours for most people. I got to that speed in about 3 months with 1 to 2 hours of practice everyday, but of course, your mileage may vary. Furthermore, as I've alluded to before, there is no guarantee that your pain is going to go away with steno. I certainly think it's worth a shot, though. Stenoing at 100 WPM requires pressing down about two strokes every second, while typing at the same speed requires about 8 successive key presses in one second. It's much more relaxed and graceful.
You can also take a look at some of the 2024 survey responses to see how long it has taken people to reach various speeds: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScCVqEkkZUAxtlwjx4ZgxxdFF59piJnh4NlB-JB628tdEoQQA/viewanalytics
The survey also has some short answer responses, and I think there are a few responses where people have reported success in mitigating their wrist issues. Of course, these responses are probably plagued by surviveship bias.
If you think steno is cool, I'd just recommend learning it on the side and see how it goes. It is very unlikely you will degrade your QWERTY muscle memory.
@@AerickSteno Huge thanks for this in-depth answer - you've given me lots to think about. I've been really busy with other stuff recently, but want to eventually look into steno. As you said if I attempt it it won't be with the expectation it'll necessarily replace my daily set up and more as exploring a hobby. Your wpm difference and the speed with which you picked it up are definitely encouraging even though they don't seem to be representative of most people's experience (judging by that survey even lots of people with +1yr experience don't surpass their qwerty speeds). I am curious why your custom dictionary was necessary and if you think it will be a better starting point for most users. I have more I want to ask eventually, but wanted to remember to actually thank you for the detailed reply.
@@das6109 Lapwing is not a theory for everyone, but there's no such thing as a theory that fits everyone. Language is very personal and it's very subjective which rules work best for you. That said, I do believe Lapwing is the best starting point for beginners who want to learn steno.
This page might interest you: plover.wiki/index.php/Choosing_a_steno_theory
Customizing your own dictionary, as I've said earlier, is essential for all stenographers in building speed. Your dictionary should be tailored to your preferences and writing styles. Eventually, everyone learns to diverge from the "defaults", incorporating techniques and styles that weren't originally in their base theory.
i hope lapwing will make this easy 🙏 by the way, i know you said you won't make a video series on lapwing until it was finished, but how long do you think that would take? if you don't know yet then that's okay. anyway great video as always!
Probably at least a year down the line 😅.
My imagined typing speed: 1 stroke per minute. :)
Interesting, Lapwing doesn't have an entry for "sesquipedalian" (previously) so I thought it had to be fingerspelt.
You only have to fingerspell anything once.
Yeah, I had to add a few entries for this.
Is it required to know first the basic of hand stroke in writing before using the keyboard?
Can we convert our mechanical into steno keyboard
If you have access to a 3D printer you can print some keycaps: cemrajc.github.io/stenotoppers/
If not, flipping the top row of keycaps so that they're upside down is a great way to make it easier to chord two keys in a column.
But regardless of what you do, a dedicated steno keyboard is just going to be better in general.
May I get the dell 2950(s) when your done with them?
I already got one and id like some of its brothers or sisters to be with it