[whoisterencelee]

I agree, stenotype's advantage is not chording and I think our insight is similar; it's the phonetic shorthand which is breaking a word down into syllables which is always shorter than the number of characters (for English anyways).

I think of it as a readily available syllable->word database, which any chording mechanism can take advantage of.

You're right, arbitrary symbols is not stenotype's strength, but chording is somewhat, at least when number of key switches is limited and the whole keyboard size is really small.

I suppose the question is whether chording in a confined space is any better than a full size keyboard, because there is zero or less wrist movement and fingers do not need to reach out (no positional issues).

The answer to that question is yes, chording is better in a setting like mobile phones, which by the way is where we do most of our typing these days, so you shouldn't lose interest.