Learn Plover!

cf. the 63 card Anki deck: [Steno order & phonetic strokes](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/14548087) * * * Hi, Congratulations on discovering [Plover](http://ploversteno.org) and joining the [mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ploversteno)! For over a century, the amazing speed and ergonomics of stenographic typing was locked up by patents and trade secrets. If it hadn't been, we would all undoubtedly use stenotype keyboards instead of QWERTY. As it is, stenotype keyboards still cost thousands of dollars, the software to use them costs thousands as well, and the lessons to learn them cost thousands more. That's over now. With the advent of Plover, it's possible to use low-tech QWERTY keyboards as stenotype keyboards (or any compatible professional steno keyboard), double or triple your typing speed, and perhaps mitigate some of the health issues associated with typing on QWERTY keyboards. I got interested in finding a chorded typing system a few years ago, before Plover existed, and gave up discouraged. Years later, when a friend mentioned Plover, I got interested again in a hurry. I contacted Mirabai, and she generously agreed to give me Plover lessons in exchange for documentation. This is the result. My goal from the start has been to make Plover easy. It's not a complex system. But it's also not entirely intuitive. As I discovered myself, it's possible to get a little lost at first, and follow some wrong paths before finding the right one. With these lessons, I've tried to start simple, and to stay simple. Each lesson introduces a few new ideas, and builds on the ideas of previous lessons. If I've done a good job, you should never feel lost, and you should never feel that the topic is so big that you'll never reach the end of it. The best way to approach these tutorials is step by step. Learn the rules in one lesson, practice the exercises until you're good at them, and only then move on to the next lesson. I strongly welcome feedback and suggestions. If you have a problem with any of the lessons, chances are someone else will too. Contact me at [zacharyb@gmail.com](mailto:zacharyb@gmail.com) with your feedback. Be sure to include "Plover Docs" in the subject line. In the email body you should give a link to the particular lesson you're talking about, and tell me as much as you can about the problems you found. If you have ideas about how I might fix those problems, tell me that too. Finally, for a list of Plover-related study aids, see [https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Learning-Stenography](https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Learning-Stenography). Be well, Zack Brown Hi, Congratulations on discovering (http://ploversteno.org) Plover and joining the (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ploversteno) mailing list ! For over a century, the amazing speed and ergonomics of stenographic typing was locked up by patents and trade secrets. If it hadn't been, we would all undoubtedly use stenotype keyboards instead of QWERTY. As it is, stenotype keyboards still cost thousands of dollars, the software to use them costs thousands as well, and the lessons to learn them cost thousands more. That's over now. With the advent of Plover, it's possible to use low-tech QWERTY keyboards as stenotype keyboards (or any compatible professional steno keyboard), double or triple your typing speed, and perhaps mitigate some of the health issues associated with typing on QWERTY keyboards. I got interested in finding a chorded typing system a few years ago, before Plover existed, and gave up discouraged. Years later, when a friend mentioned Plover, I got interested again in a hurry. I contacted Mirabai, and she generously agreed to give me Plover lessons in exchange for documentation. This is the result. My goal from the start has been to make Plover easy. It's not a complex system. But it's also not entirely intuitive. As I discovered myself, it's possible to get a little lost at first, and follow some wrong paths before finding the right one. With these lessons, I've tried to start simple, and to stay simple. Each lesson introduces a few new ideas, and builds on the ideas of previous lessons. If I've done a good job, you should never feel lost, and you should never feel that the topic is so big that you'll never reach the end of it. The best way to approach these tutorials is step by step. Learn the rules in one lesson, practice the exercises until you're good at them, and only then move on to the next lesson. I strongly welcome feedback and suggestions. If you have a problem with any of the lessons, chances are someone else will too. Contact me at (mailto:zacharyb@gmail.com) zacharyb@gmail.com with your feedback. Be sure to include "Plover Docs" in the subject line. In the email body you should give a link to the particular lesson you're talking about, and tell me as much as you can about the problems you found. If you have ideas about how I might fix those problems, tell me that too. Finally, for a list of Plover-related study aids, see (https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Learning-Stenography) https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Learning-Stenography . Be well, Zack Brown Plover Is Great 2 Typographic Conventions 2 Maintain This Site 3 Lesson 1: Fingers And Keys 3 The Keyboard 4 Rules For Short Vowel Sounds 5 What About Long Vowels And Diphthongs? 6 Stroking Your First Words 7 Exercise: One-Syllable Words 8 Considerations 9 Exercise: Consonant Clusters In Single-Stroke Words 10 Considerations 10 Where Are We? 12 Solutions To Exercises 13 Solution: Single-Syllable Words 13 Solution: Consonant Clusters In Single-Stroke Words 15 Lesson 2: Steno Order 15 Single-Stroke Versus Multi-Stroke Words 17 Steno Order 18 Where's The TRUFT? 19 Exercise: Where's The TRUFT? 19 Considerations 20 Dropping Unstressed Vowels 21 Exercise: Dropping Unstressed Vowels 21 Considerations 21 Inversion 22 Exercise: Inversion 22 Considerations 22 Solutions To Exercises 24 Solution: Where's The TRUFT? 24 Solution: Dropping Unstressed Vowels 24 Solution: Inversion 24 Lesson 3: English Sounds 25 3A: Vowels 25 3A-1: The Fifth Vowel Key 25 Lesson 3: English Sounds 25 3A: Vowels 25 3A-1: The Fifth Vowel Key 26 Exercise: The Fifth Vowel Key 26 Considerations 27 Exercise Solutions 28 Solution: The Fifth Vowel Key 28 3A-2: Long Vowels 28 3A-2: Long Vowels 28 Long Vowel Chords 29 Exercise: Long Vowel Chords 29 Exercise Solutions 31 Solution: Long Vowel Chords 31 3A-3: Diphthongs 33 Diphthong Chords 34 Here are the English diphthongs: 34 Exercise: Diphthong Chords 34 Solutions 35 Solution: Diphthong Chords 35 3A-4: Vowel Disambiguators 35 Vowel Disambiguator Chords 37 Exercise: Vowel Disambiguator Chords 38 Solutions 39 Solution: Vowel Disambiguator Chords 39 3B: k, d, f, l, g, b, z, and v 40 The Missing Keys 41 Exercise: The Missing Keys 42 Exercise Solutions 43 Solution: The Missing Keys 43 3C: n, m, j, And y 44 The Remaining Single Letters 45 Exercise: The Remaining Single Letters 45 Exercise: Including Sounds From Previous Lessons 46 Exercise Solutions 47 Solution: The Remaining Single Letters 47 Solution: Including Sounds From Previous Lessons 48 Fingerspelling! 51 How To Spell Words Out 52 The Missing Letters 53 3D: th, ch, sh, And ng 53 Digraphs 55 Exercise: Digraphs 55 Exercise: Including Sounds From Previous Lessons 56 Solutions To Exercises 57 Solution: Digraphs 57 Solution: Including Sounds From Previous Lessons 58 3E: Compound Clusters 61 Beyond The Phoneme 62 Common Compound Clusters 63 Exercise: Common Compound Clusters 63 Considerations 64 Exercise: Including Sounds From Previous Lessons 64 Considerations 64 Exercise Solutions 65 Solution: Common Compound Clusters 65 Solution: Including Sounds From Previous Lessons 66 Lesson 4: Common Briefs 68 What Is A Brief? 69 Brief Culture 70 Stroke Abundance 71 Brief Solitude 72 100 Common Briefs 73 Studying Briefs 74 Lesson 5: Prefix And Suffix Strokes 74 Multi-Stroke Words 75 What Are Prefix And Suffix Strokes? 76 When To Use Them 77 Some Starter Strokes 78 Prefixes 78 Suffixes 78 Looking Up Prefix And Suffix Strokes 80 Lesson 6: Prefix/Suffix Alternatives 80 When Not To Use Prefix And Suffix Strokes 82 Fingerspelling 83 Manually Inserting Spaces 84 Avoiding Spaces With The "No Space" Stroke 85 Lesson 7: Orthography Rules And Suffix Keys 85 Orthography Rules 86 Orthography Rules and Suffix Keys 88 Lesson 8: Non-Letters 88 Punctuation Strokes 89 Useful Strokes 91 Lesson 9: Numbers 92 The Number Bar 93 One And Two Digit Numbers 95 Longer Numbers 97 Hundreds 98 Hundreds Of Dollars 99 O'Clock 100 Lesson 10: Designing Briefs 100 Introduction 102 Check First 103 Brief Community 104 Make It Easy 105 Avoid Words And Word Parts 106 The Essence Of The Word 107 The Uncommon Syllable 108 First And Last Word Parts 109 Distinctive Parts Of Phrases 110 Multiple Inversions 111 Drop Stressed Vowels 112 Drop More Sounds 113 The Asterisk Is Everyone's Friend 114 Single Keys For Word Prefixes And Suffixes 115 Overlap Chords 116 Single Keys For Related Sounds 117 The OEU Wildcard 118 Appendix: Word Boundaries 118 The Multi-Stroke Dilemma 119 The Natural Resolution 120 Taking Control 121 Appendix: The Dictionary Format 121 The Basics 122 Introduction To Commands 124 Extended {^} Commands 126 The {&} Glue Command 128 Raw {#} Keyboard Inputs 129 Available Key Names 129 Key Sequences 129 Holding Shift Keys 130 Nesting For Arbitrary Combinations 130 The {Plover:} Control Commands 131 Add Translation 131 Suspend 131 Resume 131 Toggle 131 Configure 132 Focus 132 Quit 132 Appendix: Cheat Sheet 132 Phonetic Strokes 133 Fingering 134 Fingerspelling 135 Steno Order 136 Briefs 137 Prefix And Suffix Strokes 139 Non-Letters 141 Numbers 144 Glossary 146 Kinglet 147 Introduction 149 Try Kinglet 149 The Basics 149 The Nine-Key Alphabet 152 The Six-Key Alphabet 154 The Thumb Alphabet 156 Thumb Spaces 156 Fingering 157 QWERTY 158 Termination Conflicts 158 Capitalization, Punctuation, And Numbers 160 The Cap Chord 160 Dictionary Lookup 161 Cheat Sheet 163 Jackdaw 163 Introduction 164 The Basic Principles 165 Jackdaw on a Conventional Keyboard 166 The Missing Consonants 166 Left Hand 166 Right Hand 167 Further Consonant Combinations 167 Left Hand opening with A 167 Other Left Hand Combinations 167 Right Hand 167 Vowels 168 Other Rules 169 Stenography,steno,typing,WPM