stenographer:
(also: ‘shorthand typist’; plural: ‘stenographers‘; for the right pronunciation of this word, please click here)
a court stenographer at work
a person/employee who takes down conversations, debates, discussions, speeches of people while they are speaking;
(in a court of law) an officer/employee whose duty is to record all the court proceeding of a case, usually with a stenography machine,
a pool of stenographers taking down the speeches at a Summit
Almost every busy businessman needed a stenographer who would take down dictation of letters, instructions to the other staff and then type the text into the normal written format so that every one in the office could read and understand.
With the advent of e-mails, electronic printers, voice recording devices and the ultimate video chatting, businesses don’t find any reason to appoint the good old stenographers who might actually delay the communication process in this rat-race world.
Court stenographers are the best example of why we still need skilled people in this computer age where we have machines doing most of the dirty work for us, because, when a case is being tried in a court of law, some witnesses speak too slowly, too fast or too softly for the machines to catch up with the sounds, and a simple mechanical error might send an innocent soul to the gallows!
