Stenographer

“ For a voice-sitting the note-taker must be a rapid writer, and if able to employ shorthand has an advantage. Sometimes a stenographer is introduced; but the presence of a stranger, or of any person not intimately concerned, is liable to hamper the distinctness and fulness of a message ”

“ The training of a good stenographer does not end when she leaves school. She should be able not only to take down and transcribe notes neatly and correctly. She should be able to spell and punctuate correctly and to make the minor changes in phrasing and diction that so often can make a good letter of a poor one. The most fatal disease that can overtake a stenographer (or any one else) is the habit of slavishly following a routine. ”

“ I'm a stenographer now."
"Smartest thing you ever did."
"I—I'm in a little difficulty right now—a money one. That's why I thought if you—Could you use me in the office? I know stenography and typewriting. I—It would be a godsend, Mr. Visigoth. I dislike having to put it so strongly—but my present difficulty is serious—very."
"What's troubling you?"
"I must have an office position. I want my evenings free and I cannot be situated so that I might have to go on the road at any time." ”

“ I said at the last.
"Oh, no," he replied. "I think I have it now—Salubrities, Salubrities, Salubrities—yes—I—I think I have it."
We walked out upon the platform, and the dear old gentleman began a short address so filled with witty and pleasant things that I have ever since wished I could have had a stenographer present to take it down in shorthand. It would have formed an excellent standard of conduct and achievement worthy of any man's striving. ”

“ There had been no movement by the stenographer for some time, and Brainard had almost forgotten her presence. Suddenly, while he was in the safe, he heard a slight sound outside, like the movement of a woman’s dress. He jumped to his feet. The stenographer, with one hand on the desk telephone, was about to take off the receiver.
p. 59“Put that down!” Brainard ordered, and added more gently, “What are you telephoning for?”
“Just going to call up a friend,” the woman replied pertly, and started to take the receiver off the hook again. ”

“ He holds that the only way to start is as a printer's devil or as an office boy, to learn in time to set type, to graduate from a compositor into a stenographer, and as a stenographer take down speeches at public meetings, and so finally grow into a real reporter, with a fire badge on your left suspender, and a speaking acquaintance with all the greatest men in the city, not even excepting Police Captains. ”

“ It is only fair, however, to add here, parenthetically, that it is neither just nor considerate to a conscientious stenographer for an employer to delay his dictation until the end of the day’s work, when, merely by judicious management of his affairs and time, he can give his dictation directly after opening his morning mail. There are two sides to every question; but sometimes the side of the stenographer is not kept in mind by the employer.
Bok found it a uniform rule among his fellowworkers to do exactly the opposite to his own idea ”

“ I asked if Tuesday, January 9th, would be too soon to begin. He agreed that Tuesday would do, and inquired something about my plan of work. Of course I had formed nothing definite, but I said that in similar undertakings a part of the work had been done with a stenographer, who had made the notes while I prompted the subject to recall a procession of incidents and episodes, to be supplemented with every variety of material obtainable—letters and other documentary accumulations. Then he said:
"I think I should enjoy dictating to a stenographer, with some one to prompt me and to act as audience. ”

“ If a certain place were under suspicion the machine could rest with more ease, less food and on smaller wages than a detective and stenographer on salary. When any one started to talk in this suspected room the vibrations of the voices would start a certain connection going through this additional wire, which would set the phonograph into action. As long as the conversation continued the records would be running continuously. No matter how rapidly words are uttered the phonograph would get them, and could be run, for further investigation, as slowly and as many times as desired. ”

“ The stenographer may be set to work putting the cipher into rectangles of different dimensions. The clerk’s work gives data for possible rearrangement, for if the vowels are much out of proportion at any point, they must be connected with the proper proportion of consonants as a first step in rearrangement. Work with transposition ciphers must necessarily include much of the fit and try method. ”

“ A young stenographer said to me once that if she felt sure she had the ability to become an expert literary stenographer, she would go to evening school and would study nights and holidays, and improve herself in every possible way ”

“ Inability to satisfactorily meet this and similar tests for suggestibility would indicate an unfitness for such duties as those required by a private secretary, who must at all times have himself well in hand and not be easily lured into embarrassing revelations.
Selecting a Stenographer
You should not employ as stenographer a person whose time-reactions indicate a slowness of auditory response or an inability to carry in mind a long series of dictated words, or whose vocabulary is too limited for the requirements of your business. ”

“ The seeds of stenography, which were cast into [Pg 75] our minds at the beginning of our lessons, made their appearance as young and tender shoots when we arrived at the speeding course, and have not only begun to blossom, but also to bear fruit, inasmuch as eight of our number are already holding positions as stenographers and typewriters, and we hope they will soon arrive at full maturity when we have all become experienced shorthand writers. ”

“ Walter's method of composition really is nothing more nor less than [Pg 147] improvisation—the method children employ when they "make things up" as they "go along."
The tools necessary to the process are one large room, one outfit of furniture, and one exceptionally rapid stenographer. Mr. Walter and the stenographer enter the room. ”

“ It is also well known from practical life that some men can easily go on dictating to a stenographer while they are affixing their signature to several hundred circular letters, or can continue their fluent lecture while they are performing experimental demonstrations. ”

“ An important part of the programme was a stenographer, whose duty it would be to take down the stories as they were told and put them in type-written form, which Dobbs was sure he had heard an editor say was one of the first steps towards a favorable consideration by professional readers of the manuscripts of the ambitious.
“I am told,” said he, “that many a truly meritorious production has gone unpublished for years because the labor of deciphering the author’s handwriting proved too much for the reader’s endurance—and it is very natural that it should be so. ”

“ A stranger throws 'em completely off. A novelist I know, the writer of a very good style, who becomes very much fussed up, and is practically destroyed, when he suspects a secretary of giving critical attention to the manner of his prose. An embarrassing thing about most stenographers, I have found, is that they are greatly grieved if you say "'em" for "them," or anything like that. Or else they won't let you do such things at all, and edit everything pleasant back into perfectly good copy-book English. ”

“ So you see these things require very little intellectual labor. It’s merely the drudgery of chasing a commonplace or supernatural set of characters about the world in order to get 400 pages full of reading-matter about ’em that makes the literary profession a laborious one. Our stenographer will enable us to avoid all this. There isn’t a man of us but can talk as easily as he can fall off a log, and a tale once told at our dinners becomes in the telling a bit of writing. ”

“ This is a recording instrument which combines the phonograph and the dictagraph. One purpose—the most practical, is that a business man may dictate his letters and memoranda while sitting at his desk, in his office, instead of having a machine with a phonograph in his private office taking up space and requiring the changing of records by the dictator—which is necessary with the present business phonograph. All that will be necessary is for him to speak into a little disc. The sound waves are carried by a simple arrangement of wiring into his outer office, or wherever his stenographer works. ”

“ A man can dictate two hundred letters, speaking as rapidly as he thinks. He never has to bother over changing his records. The girl at the other end of the wire does that when the machine registers that the supply is being exhausted. She in turn uses the discs on the regular business phonograph, or, as this is intended for large offices, where there are a great many letters, and consequently a number of stenographers, she can assign the records to the different typists."
"Why, that is wonderful, Mr. Barton!" exclaimed Burke. ”

“ Stenographers are more valuable in proportion as their knowledge of spelling, sentence formation, and letter writing is reinforced by a feeling for good English and an ability to relieve their superiors of details in outlining correspondence. ”

“ These people are for ever sending off and receiving telegrams, messages, and cablegrams; they are continually telephoning; stenographers are in waiting to record their inspirations. In the intervals of activity they relapse into a curious trance, husbanding their vitality for the next crisis. I have watched them with terror and fascination. All day there are numbers of them sitting, immote and vacant, in rows and circles on the hard chairs in the hall. ”

“ In all offices the reporters are furnished with typewriters, and one is helpless until one learns how to use a machine. Longhand copy rarely is sent to the compositors nowadays. If such copy comes into the office, it is generally given to stenographers or reporters to type before being dispatched to the composing room.
3. Longhand Copy.—At times, however, when away from the office, one cannot obtain a machine and must write in longhand. In such cases, write with painstaking care for accuracy. Other things being equal, it is the legible copy that survives. ”

“ A typewriter who can write 60 words a minute can, by using the logograms of Stenotypy, multiply this rate by two and a half (at least) , speeding 150 words a minute, or saving of six out of ten hours' labor. Eighty words a minute (a speed which hundreds of typewriters attain) , would, by Stenotypy, average 200 words per minute–a speed which no living reporter, who writes legibly, can ever reach by any other system. The Stenotyper writes in this rapid way every word, using vowels and consonants that in no other system could be used. ”

“ It may, at once, be understood that anyone who is expert at the typewriter, will have no difficulty whatever in becoming a speedy Stenotypist.
8. Stenotypy dispenses with the use of text and exercise books, and saves the time (averaging from six to twelve months) necessary to acquire proficiency in shorthand, besides the expenses of a teacher.
9. As no pen wielded by a human hand can compete in speed with an ordinary typewriter, for the same reason can no reporter or penman write as fast as a Stenotypist. Stenotypy is simply shorthand operated by a typewriter. ”

“ In concluding this little treatise, the author begs to state and challenges any reporter in America to gainsay his remarks, that wherever a typewriting machine can be used, Stenotypy surpasses in speed and legibility, every known system of shorthand. Indeed, all forms of manual shorthand must inevitably become obsolete. The trolley does not more excel the old "buss," or bob-tail horse-car, than Stenotypy the impracticable and arduous systems of phonography and stenography. ”

“ As you will see, I have already become somewhat familiar with your system of Stenotypy. Whatever the hypocritical may think about it, I am satisfied that it meets a long felt want. I have often been wondering that someone did not invent long ago some system of shorthand for the typewriter. You have solved the problem. Perhaps some one will say it is not philosophical, as Mr. Pittman claims for his phonography. No matter, if it does the work. I fear some one will claim and try to wrest from you the glory of giving us a new invention of great value. ”

“ The telegraph, the press, and the typewriter are agents of communication for the written word. The telephone is an agent for the spoken word. And there is another instrument for recording sound and reproducing it, which should not be forgotten. It was in 1877 that Thomas Alva Edison completed the first phonograph. The air vibrations set up by the human voice were utilized to make minute indentations on a sheet of tinfoil placed over a metallic cylinder, and the machine would then reproduce the sounds which had caused the indentations. ”

“ Pitman's invention of a phonographic alphabet for shorthand was the beginning of verbatim reporting that has spread to every land which Anglo-Saxon civilization has touched. There is scarcely a legislative body, a court of importance, or a great convention of any kind, whose proceedings are not taken down on the spot in shorthand, accurately and at once, to say nothing of the very wide use of stenography in private business. In this bewildering commercial whirl of the twentieth century time is money, and stenography is time. ”