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RedDeerGuy1's avatar

How do Stenographers type swear words? (NSFW)

Asked by RedDeerGuy1 (24944points) October 14th, 2022

In court? Are swear words included in the device?

Which are included and which aren’t?

Humor welcome:

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4 Answers

Zaku's avatar

Stenography machines don’t have vocabulary. See https://mycareertools.com/stenotype-machine-works/

Why (in your thinking) would “swear words” be any different from any other words or phrases?

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

@Zaku I wondered if they have a preset keystroke for swear words. I thought It would be funny to see a list of preset swears. I’m just asking for giggles.

My uncle swore in court years ago, and I saw the transcript and it looks like it was spelled out one letter at a time.

Zaku's avatar

They abbreviate standard phrases, but will need to be more explicit to capture the actual words used.

They also use computerized recordings now, too.

The abbreviations in court tend to be for legal terms and expressions. The lists I’ve seen (e.g. https://www.azd.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/documents/docket%20abbreviations.pdf http://amerusa.net/resource_documents/CriminalRecordAbbreviations.pdf ) don’t seem to include curses, which tend to be pretty short anyway. They could use ones like WTF (etc. See: https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/04/omfg-ffs-wtf-a-deep-dive-into-sweary-abbreviations.html ) but with people since Internet chat now starting to actually speak acronyms as their letters out loud, then how could a stenographer distinguish between which one a speaker had used? Easy enough to just write it out.

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