Hi,

Congratulations on discovering Plover and joining the 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 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 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.

Be well,
Zack Brown