Question

Read the passage and answer the question. Passage: When Meera joined the records section of a large hospital, she discovered that the most valuable skill in the office was not typing speed but shorthand. Every day, senior doctors dictated discharge summaries, referral letters and case notes at a pace no ordinary typist could follow. A stenographer who could capture the words accurately in shorthand and then transcribe them into neat, error-free English saved the doctors hours of work and protected patients from dangerous mistakes in dosage and diagnosis. Meera therefore practised for an hour before duty, building her speed from sixty words a minute to over a hundred. She learned that shorthand is not merely a set of symbols; it is a discipline of listening. The writer must hear the whole sentence, hold its meaning in mind, and choose the briefest outline that will still be readable a week later. Those who treat shorthand as a race to write faster usually fail, because they record sounds without sense. The best stenographers, her supervisor told her, are the ones who understand what they are writing. Why does the passage say stenographers who treat shorthand as a race usually fail?