BUILDING SPEED #8
| QUICK TIP Use "wide keys" to make some reaches more comfortable and FASTER to stroke. WIDE ASTERISK KEY: Before CAT, the asterisk was generally used only for indicating a misstroke or a new paragraph. Computer-compatible theories make frequent use of the asterisk to distinguish homonyms, to identify strokes as word beginnings or endings, or to resolve conflicts between endings such as -s/-t/-st, -t/-th, etc. A wide asterisk key reduces the gap between the asterisk and adjoining keys and makes including it in strokes a much easier, more comfortable, FASTER reach. WIDE T/S or WIDE D/Z KEYS: In order to stroke -D or -Z, the right-hand little finger has to reach one key further than is required of the left-hand little finger. Also, realtime theories generally require the -ss spelling to be stroked as -SZ to avoid conflicts. If you have small hands, the reach can be awkward—or your little finger can actually get caught in the gap between the -S and -Z. Simplify the stroking by using either wide T/S keys or wide D/Z keys. Whether the wide T/S or the wide D/Z is the appropriate choice for YOU depends upon the length of your little finger in relation to the rest of your fingers. If the tip of your little finger is even with the first knuckle on your ring finger, it’s considered to be of "average" length in relation to your other fingers. If your little finger is SHORTER than average, wide D/Z keys are the better choice—they shorten the reach to the D/Z keys. If your littler finger is LONGER than average, the wide T/Z keys are the better choice—because with the extension on the D/Z keys, you could have a tendency to overreach and catch the D/Z keys and drag them into a stroke where they don’t belong. If your little finger is of average length, wheedle classmates who have the wide D/Z keys and the wide T/S keys into letting you write on their keyboards for a few minutes so you can decide which is the better choice for you. When buying a new keyboard, wide keys are an option you may select. Otherwise, almost any steno machine service center or repairmen can replace your existing keys with wide keys, usually at a fairly nominal cost. The added writing comfort and SPEED are well worth the investment. |
A MAJOR source of hesitation, frustration, and LOST SPEED for most students—even many experienced reporters—is writing "big" words.
"Big" words are NOT difficult to stroke—each syllable is written with the same simple strokes you use for one-syllable words.
But "big" words can cause a tremendous amount of hesitation and can be very SLOW to write because (1) sometimes the sequence of sounds takes a second to sort your way through; (2) every word of more than one stroke requires at least one DECISION on where to break it into shorthand strokes: Is it better to stroke "dancer" as DANS/-R or DAN/S-R? Does it make any difference? Making decisions takes time; decisions involve hesitation; hesitation reduces your speed. Words with many syllables, requiring many decisions, can cause a heck of a lot of hesitation and LOST SPEED.
It’s this hesitation involved in sorting out all the sounds and making all the decisions on where to break big words into shorthand strokes which causes many writers to grab for their brief form book. But in many instances, if not most, there are much better ways to "cut these big words down to size" rather than having to MEMORIZE a brief form for each one to the point where you can recall it and execute a stroke for it at 240 wpm.
There are several techniques we use to both simplify the sound and reduce the number of strokes.
ELISION PRINCIPLE: OMIT medial syllables (strokes) consisting of only an unaccented, single-vowel. For example: Each of the following words has an unaccented, single-vowel syllable: REL uh tiv; PEN uh tunt; SEL uh brayt, PAS uh fy. Use the elision principle, omit the single-vowel syllable, and stroke the words as REL tiv, PEN tunt, SEL brayt, and PAS fy, according to your particular writing theory. You’ve simplified the sound; you’ve reduced the number of strokes; and because you’ve omitted that vowel sound, you don’t have to know how the darned thing is SPELLED in order to stroke the word so it matches a dictionary entry—and you still have excellent readability! And you accomplished all that without having to MEMORIZE a brief form.
You DO have to use some judgment to avoid creating conflicts. For example, eliminating the single-vowel syllable can create conflicts such as the following: homophone/home phone; isolate/ice late, caraway/care way, millibar/mill bar. Whether or not a conflict would be created depends on your particular theory: e.g, if the theory makes a distinction between words ending in an ee sound (bee, see, fee, key, me, etc.) and ee sound word endings (-by, -cy, -fy, -ky, -my, etc), you can reduce HAIR uh see, to HAIR see. If your theory doesn’t make a distinction between ee sound words and ee sound word endings, you’d be creating the conflict heresy/hair see. And sometimes you may opt to shorten a word even though a possible conflict is created IF the likelihood of the conflict occurring is very remote. For example: you reduce KAD uh lak to KAD lak, creating the possible conflict cadillac/cad lack. "Cadillac" is a common word; the chance of encountering "cad lack" is remote; and if it does come up, you can execute an "insert space" stroke (KAD/SP-Z/HRABG) and get correct translation.
This "elision principle" can be used to cut thousands of words down to size. For example, the first time you encounter spes uh FIS uh tee (specificity), it could be easy to get lost in the sounds. But spes FIS tee is a snap. USE THE ELISION PRINCIPLE!
COMPRESSING SOUNDS: "Compress" two syllables together by omitting an UNACCENTED vowel sound between two consonants: Examples: buh LOON, fuh REN sik, dee LEET, kuh REKT, su POHZ. Omit the vowel, compressing the sound, and stroke BLOON, FRENS ik, DLEET, KREKT, SPOHZ. Again you’ve simplified the sound and reduced the number of strokes by omitting an unaccented vowel sound, you don’t have to know how the omitted vowel was SPELLED, you have excellent readability—all without resorting to a "memorized" shortcut. This is actually the principle used in arriving at many of what are commonly thought of as brief forms: KLEKT, KREKT, DREKT, DLAOEUT, BLAOEF, BLONG, KRUPT, etc.
Again, judgment is required to avoid creating conflicts. For example, you can eliminate the vowel, compress the sound, and shorten "derogatory" to drog tory; but you CAN’T follow the same technique with "derive" because the resulting stroke would be the same as for "drive." If you ALWAYS come back for the final -ed in a separate stroke, as encouraged but not required by NCRA, you can compress "deride" to the sound DRIDE; but if your theory includes the -ed with the same stroke as for the word, you’d have a conflict with "dried."
SHORTCUTS FOR MULTI-SYLLABLE (STROKE) WORD ENDINGS: Many English words are constructed of a very simple root or beginning, followed by a frequently-used multi-syllable ending—an ending which could be pretty intimidating and time-consuming to write if you had to sort your way through and stroke every sound every time one of those words came up: e.g., -ification, -(c)ization, -ologist, etc. Rather than memorizing a brief for each of these words, it’s much easier to cut a whole group of words down to size with a shortcut for the ending which can be used for ALL words with that ending. For example, I use F-KZ as a shortcut for -ification. I’d hate to have to sort my way through all the individual sounds and strokes for mor tuh fuh KAY shun, klair uh fuh KAY shun, stul tuh fuh KAY shun, klas uh fuh KAY shun, etc. But it’s no problem to hear or write mort F-KZ, klair F-KZ, stult F-KZ, klas F-KZ.
Review your theory and make certain you know and are using all the word ending shortcuts available in your theory. Then practice them until they’re totally automatic. If you need practice material to really focus on making these endings an automatic part of your writing, there are 400-plus writing exercises in the last section of the Fast Track to Machine Shorthand book (and on the audio cassettes) where words are grouped according to ENDING sounds based on how machine shorthand is written. The words can LOOK and sound pretty intimidating until you realize, "Hey, I can write that whole three- or four-stroke ending in one stroke; so most of these "big" words can be written with two very simple strokes." If you don’t have Fast Track, beg, borrow, or buy a rhyming dictionary and write lists of words from there.
Even though you use the elision principle, compress sounds, and use all your shortcuts for multi-stroke word endings to great advantage, you can still have a lot of hesitation and lose a lot of speed when writing big words because of all the remaining decisions on where to break big words into shorthand strokes.
In the next section we’ll talk about a couple of guidelines which can eliminate most of that decision-making, hesitation, and LOST SPEED—plus increase your stroking "efficiency."