Brief: n. A dictionary entry that expresses a word, phrase, or other sequence of characters using fewer keystrokes than the particular steno theory requires. Typically, steno users develop and maintain a large corpus of briefs, to suit their most commonly used words and phrases.

Chord: n. A group of keyboard keys that mean something when stroked together. A chord typically indicates a phoneme, group of phonemes, word, or phrase. A single stroke typically includes some number of chords and individual keys pressed simultaneously.

Dictionary: n. A text file containing words and their corresponding steno keyboard combinations.

Fingerspell: v. To type letter-by-letter using Plover strokes.

Mirabai Knight: A professional stenotypist; founder of the Plover open source project.

Misstroke: n. This occurs when you press the wrong key or the wrong chord. Misstrokes are often included as dictionary entries for the intended word. This way, even when you type a word wrong, Plover outputs it correctly.

N-Key Rollover: A feature of some keyboards that let you press any number of keys at the same time, and have the computer operating system receive a correct set of keypresses from the keyboard. When using Plover with a qwerty keyboard, Plover only works if the keyboard supports n-key rollover.

NKRO: see N-Key Rollover.

Outline: n. A dictionary entry. Typically used to distinguish between multiple entries for the same word. "I use several different outlines to cover misstrokes."

Plover: n. An open source stenographic typing system that interprets chorded keystrokes from n-key rollover qwerty keyboards and performs a dictionary lookup to determine the output of each stroke. Typing speeds of 250 words per minute have been demonstrated using Plover.

Stroke: n. A group of keyboard keys that are typed simultaneously to produce output in the form of a word, part of a word, or group of words. A stroke is typically made up of some number of chords.

v. To press and release a group of keyboard keys in order to produce a word or phrase.

Theory: n. Specific rules for spelling or sounding out words on a steno keyboard. If you understand a particular steno theory, then you can figure out the keypresses to type most or all words in the dictionary.

Ward Stone Ireland: The inventor of stenotype. Ireland's keyboard and accompanying theory are still the basis of modern stenotype systems.