Chapter 12: Wrapping up basic words

Useful links

• Words with -F as s
• Left hand single syllable orthographic chords drill

Great job!

If you’ve been following the recommended pacing, you should now be anywhere from 3 to 7 weeks into your stenography journey! That is very impressive and you should be proud of your perseverance! With this kind of commitment, chances are you will continue to do well in later chapters.

What we’ve learned so far

You should be pretty familiar with the steno layout and you should also understand how to write most single syllable words—even if you’re not very fast yet. We will finally wrap up single syllable words in this chapter before moving onto other topics.

-F as s

Some words end in consonant groups that start with an “s” sound, such as “trust”. In these cases, we would not be able to use -S since it comes after the right hand -T key in steno order. We can instead use -F to represent these “s” sounds.

Examples

• bask PWAFBG
• spasm SPAFPL
• task TAFBG
• trust TRUFT

Conflicts

This rule occasionally conflicts with words ending in “-ft” and “-st”. In these cases, the “-ft” word is given priority, and *s is used as a secondary chord for “-st”.

• lift HREUFT
• list HR*EUS
• loft HROFT
• lost HRO*S

Section practice

Words with -F as s

Miscellaneous orthographic chords

Left hand chords

We’ve already learned a few orthographic chords like AU and AO whose usages depend on spelling rather than pronunciation. There are also a few left hand consonant chords that behave the same way.

• “ph” as in “phase” is written with TP*
• “wr” as in “write” is written with WR
• “wh” as in “when” is written with WH

All of these except TP* are pretty intuitive as their steno keys match the spelling that they represent.

KR for c in conflicts

When there is a conflict between a word that contains the “soft c” sound and another word that is spelled with an s, use KR.

Examples

• cent KREPBT
  • As SEPBT is already “sent”
• cite KRAOEUT
  • As SAOEUT is already “sight”

KH for hard c spelled ch

Words spelled with “ch” can sometimes be homophones with words spelled with only a single “c”. In these cases, we use K for the words spelled with a “c” and KH for words spelled with “ch”.

KH can also be used in general for words spelled with “ch” but pronounced with a “hard c”. For example, in the word “choreography”, the initial consonant is a “hard c” so K would typically be used on the left hand. However, using KH is also a valid choice. This is helpful if your first instinct is to use the “ch” spelling to form the left hand consonant.

NOTE: the dictionary is not complete when it comes to “ch” words pronounced with a “hard c” and written with KH. I would recommend sticking to K and only using KH when there is a conflict. However, you are completely free to add these if you wish.

Examples

• chord KHORD
  • KORD is already “cord”
• charisma KHA/REUS/PHA
  • KA/REUS/PHA is also valid

-S for all s

Use -S for an ending “s” letter, regardless of if it is pronounced as a “z”.

Examples

• fuse TPAOUS
• cruise KRAOUS

Conflicts

You will inevitably run into some conflicts such as “race”, “raise”, “raze”, and “raiz”. -S is given to “race” since it has an “s” sound, but how do we deal with the rest? It’s actually entirely up to you as to how you might want to proceed. Conflicts such as these are tricky because they don’t appear very often; you’re better off memorizing the exceptions than trying to learn rules to deal with them.

By default, Lapwing gives -Z to “raise” since it’s quite common and is spelled with an “s” (thereby giving it higher priority, in a sense). To write “raze”, you’d use an alternative vowel chord: RAEZ. Finally, for “raiz”, you could use the asterisk key. Although, this word isn’t even in the default dictionary. Thus, you’d write these words like so:

• “race” RAEUS
• “raise” RAEUZ
• “raze” RAEZ
• “raiz” RA*EUZ

This illustrates how messy the English language can be and how designing a theory to work around all of these conflicts without any arbitrary rules/briefs can be a difficult task. When you run into conflicts with more than three words in the future, do remember that (unless explicitly stated) it is perfectly acceptable (even expected!) to change around some outlines. It’s best to create outlines that make sense to you instead of memorizing someone else’s personal intuition.

y sound without the letter y

If you encounter a word that has the “y” sound, only use KWH if it is spelled with a “y”. If it isn’t spelled with a “y” don’t use any left hand consonant chord.

Examples

• yes KWHES
• yep KWHEP
• use AOUS
• usual AOURB/WAL
  • There aren’t, unfortunately, a lot of single stroke words to demonstrate this

NOTE: AOURB is also defined as “usual” in the default dictionary. This is a briefing style where the first stroke(s) of a write-out is defined as the full word.

Section practice

Left hand single syllable orthographic chords drill

It’s very recommended that you complete this drill.

The stroke separator

So far we have only been looking at single stroke words. We will soon look at words that require multiple strokes to be written. To notate these multistroke outlines, we use the slash character / to separate strokes.

For example, to write the outline TPEUL/-PL, you would press TPEUL, release all the keys, and then press -PL.

When sounds can’t follow steno order

Sometimes, it is impossible to write a single syllable word using in a single stroke (see the examples below). In these cases, write as much of the word as you can in a single stroke, and then complete the rest using the corresponding right hand key or chord that finishes the word. Note that some right chords are different to their canonical form when using this technique:

• To end a word with “-t”, use *T
• To end a word with “-f” or “-v”, use *F

There will be no practice material for this section, but do keep this technique in mind.

Examples

• film TPEUL/-PL
• helm HEL/-PL
• help HEL/-P
• kelp KEL/-P
• list HREUS/*T
  • Also HR*EUS (recommended, see note below)
• thirst THEURS/*T
  • Also TH*EURS (recommended, see note below)
• sixth SEUBGS/*T
• elf EL/*F
• shelf SHEL/*F
• peddle PED/-L
• saddle SAD/-L

NOTE: remember that *S can be used to represent the “-st” cluster when -F is not available. It is highly recommended you use *S instead of splitting these words into two strokes.

Overlapping compound clusters

Some words end in a compound cluster that was covered in the previous chapter. However, there may be another sound that prevents the compound cluster chord from being included. For example, the word “partial” ends in a “-shal” sound which can be written with -RBL. However, it is preceded by an “r”. Therefore, the first stroke has to be PAR. Since this already contains the -R key, it’s not possible to insert -RBL into this stroke.

NOTE: PARBL is defined as “partial” in the default dictionary. You’re free to use this, but keep in mind it is considered more of a brief since the “r” is dropped.

There are two ways to deal with these scenarios. The first method involves writing as much as the word as possible, and then splitting the remaining compound cluster as a separate stroke. For the word “partial”, this results in PAR/-RBL. This is a lot like the previous section where sounds break steno order.

The second method uses the syllabic splitting technique found in chapter 15. However, instead of using a compound cluster, the second stroke utilizes the whole keyboard to represent an entire syllable. This results in PAR/SHAL.

Either method is valid, but given that syllabic splitting has not been introduced yet, I would recommend using the first method for now.

Examples

• rumble RUPL/-BL
• possible POS/-BL
• credibility KRED/-BLT
• solubility SOL/-BLT
• bracelet PWRAEUS/-LT
• pamphlet PAPL/*F/-LT
• fragment TPRAG/-PLT
• parchment PAFRPB/-PLT
• martial PHAR/-RBL
• partial PAR/-RBL
• conscious KOPB/-RBS
• noxious TPHOBG/-RBS

Right hand xt

• -GT is “-xt” as in text

There are only a handful of words in English that end in “-xt” and only two that are one syllable long in the Lapwing dictionary. You can pretty much just memorize these as briefs.

Examples

• text TEGT
• next TPHEGT

Conflicts between chords and individual keys

Some groups of words like “slug” and “shrug” would normally be given the same steno outline without any additional rules: SHRUG. In this case, the HR chord can either represent “l” or “hr”—Lapwing generally assigns lower priority to the word where the keys match one to one with the letters. The asterisk is used to different between the two:

• slug SHRUG
• shrug SHR*UG

NOTE: you may occasionally run into inconsistencies in the default dictionary that contradict this rule. If you spot any, please let me know! However, do keep in mind that you’re at a stage where you should be tailoring your own dictionary. If you’d like to change this rule and switch around the priorities, go for it!

-al- words

For some American speakers, the “l” in words like “palm” aren’t audible at all. Instead of having to include this sound in the steno stroke, Lapwing essentially treats this as silent. Therefore, this word would be written like PAUPL. This makes it easier to write in one stroke rather than two: PAUL/-PL.

Remember: even though this word is spelled with a single “a”, the vowel is closer to the one in “cot” KOT than “cat” KAT, so we cannot simply use the A key; we need to use AU.

Examples

• calm KAUPL
• chalk KHAUBG
• psalm SAUPL
  • Note that the “p” is silent
• stalk STAUBG

No test this chapter!

Chapter briefs

This section is completely optional, but recommended. If you prefer to learn these all at once, they will be covered in chapter 16.

NOTE: remember that these are briefs; the explanations are not applicable to any arbitrary word.

Practice sentences

1. it is also an animal!
2. I will help him.
3. mother will not like it.
4. many do not need your stuff.

Answers

1. T/S/HR-S/APB/PHAPBL/TP-BG
2. EU/HR/HEP/HEUPL/TP-PL
3. PHO*RT/HR/TPHOT/HRAOEUBG/T/TP-PL
4. PHA*EPB/TKO/TPHOT/TPHAOED/KWHUR/STUF/TP-PL

Extra briefs