voice writing

voice writing
 n.— «In the US, court reporters have abandoned stenotype machines, whose keyboards use chord-like combinations to represent sounds, for a technique called voice writing. The “writer”—really a speaker—repeats testimony into a microphone nestled in a hand-held mask that prevents her voice from being heard in court; the recording is later transcribed, usually with speech-recognition software. The Stenomask dates back to the 1940s, when an American court reporter encased a microphone first in a cigar-box, then in a tomato tin, and finally in an old coffeepot, but it didn’t become a standard fixture until the advent of speech recognition programs. It’s also cheaper: machine stenography takes three years to learn, voice writing six months.» —“Diary” by Leah Price London Review of Books (United Kingdom) Dec. 4, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)