Chapter 15: Syllabic splitting

Useful links

• Basic syllabic splitting drill
• KWR as a silent consonant drill
• KWR as “y” drill
• Chapter 15 test

Syllabic splitting basics

Earlier chapters covered affix strokes and compound words. Syllabic splitting is the last technique for writing multisyllable words that cannot be written in one stroke. Words are split roughly into their syllables based on the following rules:

1. Split the word using other methods (prefixes, suffixes, and compound words)—even just partially
2. Split each remaining part by its syllables so that every stroke after the first begins with a consonant
3. Ensure not to double consonants across separate strokes
4. With multiple ways of splitting syllables, preserve the natural sounds of the word

Basic examples and explanations

components

1. First notice that this word can be split into a root word and a suffix: component/s.

2. There are three possibilities for the first stroke: co/mponent/s, com/ponent/s and comp/onent/s. Take note of what the second stroke has to begin with in each of these scenarios (underlined letters).

3. The first scenario is not correct as the second stroke would have to start with “mp” (not a valid left hand consonant). The third scenario is also incorrect since the second stroke begins with a vowel. Only the second method is valid: com/ponent/s.

4. To split the remaining “ponent” group, remember that every stroke must begin with a consonant. The only way to do this is by splitting it as: po/nent.

Full outline: KOPL/POE/TPHEPBT/-Z

shatterproof

1. This word is clearly a compound of “shatter” and “proof”. The last stroke should therefore be PRAO*F.

2. It wouldn’t make sense to use a suffix stroke for the “^er” part, so use syllabic splitting.

3. To begin the second stroke with a consonant, it must be split as: sha/tter.

Full outline: SHA/TER/PRAO*F

exam

1. There are no prefixes, suffixes, or compound words that can be used.

2. Since there is no consonant after the “x”, it should be split across the two strokes.

Full outline: EBG/SAPL

Whenever “x” has to be split across two strokes, use -BG in the first stroke and S in the second.

simile

1. This word does not contain any prefixes, suffixes, and is not a compound word.

2. As each stroke cannot begin with a vowel, there is only one way to split this word: si/mi/le.

Full outline: SEU/PHEU/HRAOE

dependent

1. First split this word into a root and a suffix: “depend” + “-ent”; the last stroke is KWREPBT.

2. There is only one way to split “depend” so that the second stroke begins with a consonant: de/pend.

Full outline: TKE/PEPBD/KWREPBT

ally

1. There are no prefixes, suffixes, or compound words that can be used.

2. Split this in a way that every stroke begins with a consonant results in: a/lly

Full outline: A/HRAOEU

ludicrous

1. No prefixes, suffixes, or compound words are available to use.

2. Since the second stroke must start with a consonant, the first stroke can only contain the first consonant and vowel: lu/dicrous.

3. There are two ways of splitting the rest of the word: lu/dic/rous and lu/di/crous.

4. The latter is more natural as the “cr” in “ludicrous” is closer to one sound than two distinct ones.

Full outline: HRAOU/TKEU/KRUS

wrinkly

1. This can be split into wrinkl(e)/y with the KWREU suffix.

2. The root word “wrinkle” should be written as WR*EUPBG/-L.

Full outline: WR*EUPBG/-L/KWREU

efficient

1. No affixes or compound words are available to use.

2. There is only one way to split this word so that every stroke begins with a consonant: e/ffi/cient

Full outline: AOE/TPEU/SHEPBT or E/TPEU/SHEPBT

More examples

• compromise KOPL/PRO/PHAOEUS or KO*PL/RO/PHAOEUS
• dispatcher TKEUS/PAFP/*ER
• hubris HAOU/PWREUS
• inadvertent EUPB/AD/SRER/TEPBT
• occasion OE/KAEUGS
• parliament PAR/HRAPLT
• reassured RE/A/SHUR/-D or RAOE/A/SHUR/-D
• sentiment SEPB/TEUPLT
• example EBG/SA*PL/-L

Consonant group ambiguity

Some consonant groups contain two or more distinct consonants, and it becomes ambiguous as to how to split them. For example, the word “hydrate” can be written as HAOEUD/RAEUT or HAOEU/TKRAEUT depending on where the “dr” consonant cluster is split. In these scenarios, use the outline that represents how the sounds are grouped. When saying this word, the “dr” group sounds less like two distinct consonants, and more like a single consonant. Therefore, “hydrate” should be written like HAOEU/TKRAEUT.

The strokes HAOEUD/RAEUT would instead be the phrase “hide rate”.

In a word like “guardrail”, the “dr” consonants are spoken more like two distinct sounds. Therefore, this word would be split in between the “d” and “r” (even putting aside the fact that this is a compound word).

Unfortunately, there is no standardized method for dealing with this ambiguity. A lot of it is based on my own intuition as a speaker of North American English. For example, I would split “astronomy” as A/STRO/TPHO/PHEU and “astronaut” as AS/TRO/TPHAUT just based on the stress and how the consonant groups sound.

Here are some tips that may be helpful for understanding where to split consonant groups:

• _r consonant groups are kept together on the left hand
  • betray PWE/TRAEU
  • madrigal PHA/TKREU/TKPWAL
  • okra OE/KRA
  • regress RE/TKPWRES
• consonant groups with two sounds are split in the middle (balanced between the two strokes)
  • discover TKEUS/KO/SRER
    • TKEU/SKO/SRER ❌
  • pastor PAS/TOR
    • PA/STOR ❌
• consonant groups with three or more sounds are dependent on stress
  • astray A/STRAEU
  • astronaut AS/TRO/TPHAUT
  • astronomy A/STRO/TPHO/PHEU
  • distribute TKEUS/TREU/PWAOUT

NOTE: these rules are not entirely consistent. If none of the outlines in the lookup tool work for you, add your own!

Section practice

Basic syllabic splitting drill

KWR as a silent linker

Sometimes it is not possible to start a stroke with a consonant. In these cases, use KWR as a silent linker chord to join a stroke to the previous.

KWR with the -R key

In North American English, the letter “r” sometimes alters the sound of the vowel such as in the following examples:

When this occurs in multistroke words, treat the -R key as a vowel that is included in the previous stroke. Since the next stroke cannot start with R, use KWR.

Examples

• carry KAEUR/KWREU
• fury TPAOUR/KWREU
• hurry HUR/KWREU
• berry PWER/KWREU

Why the EU chord?

The examples above all end in the long e sound (/i/) as in “tee”—so why EU? Well, to be quite honest, I’m not entirely sure myself. This is simply what Plover theory sometimes does and it’s just what I’ve gotten used to. This does, unfortunately, mean that Lapwing theory has inherited the quirk.

That being said, the usage of EU vs AOE is more defined in Lapwing theory and is less arbitrary. If a word has a long e sound, use these rules to decide between EU and AOE:

1. If the vowel is spelled with a single “i”, use EU
   • petite PE/TEUT
   • ski SKEU
2. If the vowel is spelled with “ey” or “y”, use EU
   • city SEU/TEU
   • key KEU
3. If EU is already taken by another word, use AOE
   • marine PHAR/KWRAOEPB (since PHAR/KWREUPB is marin)
4. In all other situations, use AOE or AE as previously covered
   • cookie KAO/KAOE
   • spleen SPHRAOEPB
   • here HAOER
   • hear HAER

Exceptions

For words that treat “r” as a consonant, it is acceptable (and sometimes the only way in the default Lapwing dictionary) to split the word before the “r” letter.

• arose A/ROES
• derive TKE/RAOEUF
• prerogative PRE/RO/TKPWA/TEUF
• reroute RE/RAOUT

If you are having trouble with these exceptions, a good rule of thumb is to treat “r” as a consonant if it is preceded by a prefix stroke. This is not always 100% accurate, but it can be helpful if you are having trouble with these quirks of North American English.

Prefix vowel exceptions

The stroke after a prefix may start with a vowel if needed. However, remember to only use prefixes only when there is a semantic relation.

Examples

• KOE/OR/TKEU/TPHAEUT coordinate
• EUPB/AOE/KWAUL inequal
• PRAOE/OR/TKAEUPB preordain
• UPB/A/TAEUPB/-BL unattainable

Section practice

KWR as a silent consonant drill

KWR as “y”

To start a vowel

In addition to being a silent linker chord, KWR can also represent a joining “y” sound in multisyllable words. For completeness, here is a table listing the different situations involving the “y” sound:

In the three situations above, only the last one should be new.

Examples

• bunion PWUPB/KWROPB
• opinion OE/PEUPB/KWROPB
• onion OPB/KWROPB
• trunnion TRUPB/KWROPB

Between two vowels

The KWR chord can also represent the “y” sound that occurs between two vowels. In my accent, the words “piano” or “aioli” have a subtle “y” sound in the second syllable (“pee-ya-no” and “ai-yo-lee”).

Linguistically, this sound is called a glide and is represented with KWR in Lapwing:

• piano PEU/KWRA/TPHOE
• aioli AOEU/KWROE/HREU

If if explanation of a glide doesn’t make sense to you, you can also just treat KWR as a silent linker just like in previous sections.

Essentially, if there are two distinct vowel sounds next to each other which cannot be represented by a single vowel chord, use KWR to link them in separate strokes.

Examples

• KAEU/KWROS chaos
• TKAOEU/KWRA/KREU/TEUBG diacritic
• AOEU/TKAOE/KWRA idea
• SRAOEU/KWROLT violet

As a vowel pair

How is “alleviate” written? With everything covered so far, it may be tempting to use A/HRAOE/SREU/KWRAEUT (a/lle/vi/ate). However, four strokes is quite a lot. This outline needs to be compressed into fewer strokes if the goal is to be fast at steno.

To do this, let the KWRAEU stroke represent the entire “ia” sound. This sound is made up of two distinct vowels that are blended together. The “ia” pair is composed of the long e /i/ vowel as in “beet” and the long a /ei/ vowel as in “bait”. These are blended together to form the sound “ee-ait” /iˌeɪt/.

Say “alleviate” out loud and see if you can identify this “ee-ait” vowel pair in the last syllable!

Instead of treating KWR as a silent linker chord, it can also be used to represent the first vowel sound in this pair. The second sound would be written with the thumb keys. This way, KWRAEU represents the “ia” sound. By doing so, the start of the last stroke has effectively been shifted: instead of a/lle/vi/ate, it can be split as a/lle/v/iate Finally, the “v” sound can also be shifted to the second stroke: a/llev/iate

• alleviate A/HRAOEF/KWRAEUT

Another way of thinking about this is that KWR is representing a subtle “y” sound just like in the previous section. If you can hear a “y” sound in alleviate (as in “a-leev-yait”), then you can simply use KWR to represent this sound, and write the rest of the vowels using the thumbs.

Thinking about vowel pairs is a great way of understanding how KWR can be used in these situations. However, if it is a bit slow, I recommend thinking about KWR as a “y” sound. We can approximate complicated vowel sounds just by using a “y” sound and a vowel we’ve learned before.

Examples

In the following examples, try to pronounce each word by approximating the vowel pair with a “y” sound. Notice how these approximations still resemble the word being pronounced.

• appreciate A/PRAOERB/KWRAEUT
  • KWRAEU represents “ia” vowel pair
• aficionado A/TPEURB/KWRO/TPHA/TKOE
  • KWRO represents “io” vowel pair
• nefarious TPHE/TPAEUR/KWRUS
  • KWRU represents the “iou” vowel (the “o” is silent)
• video SREUD/KWROE
  • KWROE represents the “eo” vowel

Section practice

KWR as “y” drill

Prefix priority

Sometimes a given steno outline can have both a word and a prefix that it can represent. For example, to write the simple word “by” the obvious steno outline is PWAOEU. However, there also exists the “bi-” prefix as in the words “bicycle” PWAOEU/SAOEUBG/-L, “bifurcate” PWAOEU/TPUR/KAEUT, and “bilateral” PWAOEU/HRA/TER/KWRAL.

NOTE: these examples with the PWAOEU aren’t all being used correctly from a prefix perspective (they aren’t altering a root word semantically). However, from a syllabic splitting perspective, these are correct.

Therefore, it makes sense to assign a different stroke other than PWAOEU to the word “by”. Otherwise, if PWAOEU is used for the prefix and the word, conflicts such as the following can arise:

• PWAOEU/SAOEUBG/-L/-G
  • Can be the word “bicycling”
  • Can be the phrase “by cycling” as in “We can achieve hover by cycling between engine modes.”
• PWAOEU/HRA/TER/KWRAL
  • Can be the word “bilateral”
  • Can be the phrase “by lateral” as in “Love waves cause damage by lateral movement of the ground.”

Below is a table of some basic word/prefix conflicts. Prefixes will be given to the intuitive outline and the word variant will use the asterisk key or a different vowel chord. However, for some common words, it’s useful to brief them as it is useful in phrases.

NOTE: you are free to add your own briefs for the word variants.

Multistroke prefixes

There are also conflicts between words and prefixes that are more than one stroke long. In these cases, the rules are much more simple. Use the asterisk key on the last stroke of the outline to write the word variant, and no asterisk to write the prefix.

Some of these can also be briefed. Feel free to use the look up and discover briefs.

Three way conflict between “by”, “bye”, and “buy”:

Again, feel free to change around these outlines.

Next chapter

Don’t worry too much about trying to memorize these briefs just yet. It’s only important that to understand the motivation as to why some basic words aren’t very intuitive. These briefs (along with others) are covered in the next chapter with practice material.

Chapter 15 test

This chapter’s test consists of all the practice drills in this chapter. Make sure your settings are configured as such:

• Limit word count: 45
• Start from word: 1
• Repetitions: 3
• Sort: random
• Show hint for every word: unchecked
• Hide hint on last repetition: unchecked
• Show hint on misstroke: checked

Click here to access the chapter 15 test

Recommended completion goal

This is only a suggestion if you are unsure of when to move on to the next chapter; it is not a strict requirement!

Aim for 10–40 WPM with 90% accuracy.

You may use the test material as practice!