Stenography

On the subway this afternoon, the lady next to me was working on exercises in a language workbook.  However, unlike normal languages, the letters on these pages were stacked in random orders with spacing of various sizes interspersed in between.  It used the Roman alphabet, but was neither a romantic nor a germanic language.  My curiosity piqued, I asked her what she was studying.  Though I'd never seen it before, I hypothesized that it could potentially be court room stenography.

My hypothesis was correct!  She was studying to be a court room typist.  As a stenographer she would use this shortform langauge to type upwards of 200 wpm.  Wow.  She also showed me the small typewriter that she had with her -- it had half as many keys as a typical keyboard.  She said that the left hand side dictated the beginning of the word and the right hand side typed the end, this way, an entire word could be typed at once.

She said that a typical course of study takes 3 years and she was about halfway through.  Her goal is to work to become a close caption typist to  make upwards of $140,000 a year, but that would take another year of two of training.

So very interesting!  Learned something cool over the course of short 3 subway stops! 

2m walk + 3 m run + dance