SSC Stenographer Syllabus 2026: CBT Pattern, Skill Test Norms & Marking Scheme (Grade C & Grade D)

Exam Snapshot / परीक्षा अवलोकन

Important Dates & Event Schedule / तिथियां

Selection Stages & Exam Pattern / परीक्षा पैटर्न और विषय

Important Marking Rules & Qualifying Criteria / महत्वपूर्ण नियम

Syllabus Overview & Preparation Guidance / पाठ्यक्रम विवरण

SSC Stenographer selection runs through a 200-mark CBT with no Mathematics section, followed by a qualifying Stenography Skill Test whose dictation speed and transcription time differ by grade and language. This syllabus and pattern apply identically across both the 2025 and 2026 recruitment cycles.

SSC Stenographer's syllabus is unusual among Staff Selection Commission exams in two specific ways worth understanding before diving into topic lists, and both differences shape how a candidate should actually prepare. The first is structural: this is one of the very few SSC exams with no Mathematics or Quantitative Aptitude section at all. The Computer Based Test, common in format across Grade C and Grade D candidates alike, is a 200-question, 200-mark, two-hour paper built entirely around three subjects — General Intelligence & Reasoning (50 questions/50 marks), General Awareness (50 questions/50 marks), and English Language & Comprehension (100 questions/100 marks) — with English alone carrying half the total marks, a notably heavier weighting than English receives in most other SSC exams, reflecting the underlying logic that stenography is fundamentally a language-and-transcription skill rather than a numerically analytical one. Within General Intelligence & Reasoning, the syllabus covers the standard SSC reasoning toolkit — analogies, coding-decoding, series completion, verbal and non-verbal reasoning, classification, and puzzle-based questions — generally pitched at a difficulty comparable to CHSL-level reasoning rather than the more advanced reasoning seen in CGL. General Awareness draws on current affairs from the months leading up to the exam, static general knowledge across Indian history, polity, geography and economy, and basic science, again broadly comparable in depth to other 12th-pass-level SSC exams rather than graduate-level papers. English Language & Comprehension, given its outsized weight, deserves the most concentrated preparation time and covers grammar rules, vocabulary (synonyms, antonyms, idioms and phrases), one-word substitution, spotting errors, sentence improvement and correction, and comprehension passages — since half the CBT's marks sit here, a candidate's English proficiency alone can meaningfully swing their overall CBT rank in a way that isn't true for most other SSC exams. A newer structural feature worth flagging for anyone who has prepared for SSC exams before but not this specific one recently is sectional timing: rather than one open 120-minute window across all 200 questions, the paper is split into three timed parts — 30 minutes each for Part I and Part II, and 60 minutes for Part III — meaning candidates cannot shift time freely between sections mid-exam the way they might on an untimed-sectional paper, which changes preparation strategy meaningfully: a candidate strong in English but weak in reasoning, for instance, cannot simply rush through reasoning and bank the saved time for English, since each section's timer is independent. Negative marking is a flat 0.25 mark per incorrect answer across the whole paper, with no penalty for questions left unattempted, and SSC applies no independent sectional cutoff — only a combined total score across all three sections determines qualification for the next stage. The second distinctive feature of this exam's syllabus, and the one that genuinely sets Stenographer apart from every other SSC recruitment, is the Stenography Skill Test that follows CBT qualification — a practical, hands-on assessment that has no equivalent anywhere else in the SSC exam family. Both grades follow the same basic format: a spoken passage is dictated for exactly 10 minutes, which the candidate is expected to capture in shorthand as it's read aloud, followed by a fixed window on a computer to transcribe those shorthand notes back into typed text. The dictation speed and subsequent transcription time differ meaningfully by grade and by the language chosen at the application stage: Grade C candidates are dictated at 100 words per minute and then given 40 minutes to transcribe if working in English, or 55 minutes if working in Hindi; Grade D candidates, reflecting the marginally lower speed threshold for this grade, are dictated at 80 words per minute and given 50 minutes to transcribe in English or 65 minutes in Hindi — in both cases, Hindi transcription is allowed noticeably more time than English, reflecting the practical reality of Hindi typing and script conventions. The Skill Test carries no marks toward final merit whatsoever — it exists purely as a qualifying gate, evaluated against a permissible error margin in the transcript that is commonly cited by exam-preparation sources as being in the region of roughly 5% for Grade C, with a somewhat wider allowance typically extended for Grade D and for Hindi transcripts, though candidates should treat the precise percentage threshold as something to confirm directly in the specific skill-test notice for their cycle rather than as a fixed, unchanging number across every year, since exact margins have occasionally been adjusted between cycles (the 2025 cycle's own FRTA was itself revised on 31 July 2026 after candidate representations about how the Skill Test had been evaluated, underlining how much this stage's grading can matter to the final outcome). What follows the Skill Test is Document Verification — historically a fairly standard, separate DV appointment, though for the current 2025 cycle specifically this step has effectively been folded into the FRTA-linked Sliding process/Identity Verification happening on 11-12 August 2026, where document checks and post-allocation decisions occur together at the same appointment rather than as two separate later steps. The single most important structural point for preparation, regardless of grade or cycle, is that final merit and ranking for SSC Stenographer selection are based entirely on CBT marks — the Skill Test and Document Verification stages are pass/fail gates that eliminate a candidate on failure but add nothing to their score on success, meaning that, unlike exams where a strong Tier 2 or interview performance can meaningfully boost a borderline Tier 1 rank, a Stenographer candidate's eventual position in the merit list is effectively locked in the moment their CBT is scored — which is exactly why candidates should treat the CBT, not the skill test, as the stage that decides everything, while still taking the skill test seriously enough to actually clear its qualifying threshold, since falling short there discards even the strongest CBT performance entirely.

एसएससी स्टेनोग्राफर का पाठ्यक्रम अन्य एसएससी परीक्षाओं से दो मायनों में अलग है। पहला — इसमें गणित/मात्रात्मक अभियोग्यता खंड बिल्कुल नहीं होता। सीबीटी 200 प्रश्न, 200 अंक, 2 घंटे की होती है — सामान्य बुद्धि व तर्कशक्ति (50), सामान्य जागरूकता (50), और अंग्रेजी भाषा व बोधन (100, सबसे अधिक भारांक)। सेक्शनल टाइमिंग लागू होती है: भाग-I के लिए 30 मिनट, भाग-II के लिए 30 मिनट, भाग-III के लिए 60 मिनट। नकारात्मक अंकन 0.25 प्रति गलत उत्तर है, कोई सेक्शनल कट-ऑफ नहीं है। दूसरा अंतर — सीबीटी के बाद स्टेनोग्राफी स्किल टेस्ट होता है: 10 मिनट का डिक्टेशन — ग्रेड सी के लिए 100 शब्द प्रति मिनट (ट्रांसक्रिप्शन: अंग्रेजी 40 मिनट, हिंदी 55 मिनट), ग्रेड डी के लिए 80 शब्द प्रति मिनट (ट्रांसक्रिप्शन: अंग्रेजी 50 मिनट, हिंदी 65 मिनट)। यह टेस्ट केवल क्वालीफाइंग है और अंतिम मेरिट में जोड़ा नहीं जाता — अंतिम मेरिट पूरी तरह सीबीटी अंकों पर आधारित होती है। 2025 चक्र में स्किल टेस्ट मूल्यांकन को लेकर उठी आपत्तियों के बाद एफआरटीए को 31 जुलाई 2026 को संशोधित भी किया गया था।

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