When you are a stenographer, it means that you are working to translate oral accounts into written accounts. Many times, you will be working with live people—people who are telling you something—and you are making sure that their words get onto the page in the right way. However, you also might be working with recorded speech, in many forms of recordings, and making sure that they get onto paper in the right way. Therefore, as a stenographer, you are going to spend many of your work days differently, but you are still going to be doing basically the same thing.
When you become a stenographer, before you can begin to do regular workdays and regular work assignments, you are going to need to be sure that you have taken the right training so that you can operate the stenographer equipment and machinery. This is going to mean that you have a lot of learning to do, because you simply cannot write down things as people say them, because people tend to talk too quickly even for the fastest typists.
As a stenographer, your jobs are all going to begin the same: by being assigned to you. Either they will be assigned by your employer, like the court system, or they will be assigned by yourself, by saying that you will take a job for someone. Either way, you are going to probably get some information about what you'll be writing, and then you are going to get to work.
When a stenographer is your employment, your job is going to be quite simple each day. You will meet with the parties who need to have information put down, and you will help make that happen. Sometimes you will be working with people talking to you and taking down their speech. This is especially true if you are a court stenographer. Other times, however, you are going to be working with speech that has already been recorded, such as to a tape recorder. Then you'll be putting down that information onto type setting. Either way, your job as a stenographer is going to be to be sure that the words that are spoken are recorded forever.
