On the Job: Max Curry

Max Curry knows that A is A, but PW is B, and KR is C, SKWR is J and so on. When he studied court reporting in college, learning the stenography alphabet fulfilled his foreign language requirement. 

Using his stenographic writer, he presses several unlabeled keys at the same time — one hit for each sound in a word. He goes left to right, with the first part of the word on the left, vowels on a separate row in the bottom center, and the ending of the word on the right. Sometimes he’s pressing 10 keys at a time. Common phrases like, “at this time,” “as a matter of fact” and “as soon as” have shortcuts, and he creates additional shortcuts for words and names he knows will come up often on a given job.