The Stenographer syllabus surprises people the first time they read it properly. There is no Quantitative Aptitude section at all - no percentages, no time and work, no data interpretation - and in exchange English Language and Comprehension is doubled to 100 questions. That single structural fact should reorganise your whole study plan, because a candidate coming from CGL preparation is carrying a large amount of arithmetic that this exam will never test, and is under-prepared in the one section that carries half the marks. Here is the syllabus section by section, plus what the skill test actually asks of you.
The syllabus is identical for Grade C and Grade D at the CBT stage - the same three parts, the same 200 questions, the same 2-hour paper with +1 for a correct answer and -0.25 for a wrong one. The two grades diverge only at the skill test, where Grade C is dictated at 100 words per minute and Grade D at 80. The current cycle has also introduced sectional timing, roughly 30 minutes each for Parts I and II and 60 minutes for Part III, which means the syllabus must now be prepared to a per-section speed target rather than an overall one; check your cycle's notification for the exact timings. Notice what is absent: there is no Quantitative Aptitude paper, though arithmetical reasoning and number series sit inside the Reasoning section and basic calculation still appears there.
SSC's own description covers vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, synonyms, antonyms and correct usage. In practice the 100 questions distribute across error spotting, sentence improvement, fill in the blanks, cloze passages, reading comprehension, synonyms and antonyms, idioms and phrases, one-word substitution, spelling correction, active-passive voice and direct-indirect narration. Because the section is twice the size of a CGL English section, the tail of the syllabus gets tested too - the obscure idiom and the rarely-seen one-word substitution are far more likely to appear here than in a 25-question paper.
The official wording covers abstract ideas, symbols, arithmetical computation and analytical functions, with both verbal and non-verbal question types. Expect analogies, classification, coding-decoding, series, blood relations, direction sense, syllogism, ranking and arrangement on the verbal side, and mirror and water images, paper folding and cutting, embedded figures, and figure series on the non-verbal side. This is the section with the fastest improvement curve in the whole syllabus - a candidate who drills it methodically for a month can usually add ten or more marks, which is the cheapest improvement available anywhere in the paper.
The section spans current events, history, culture, geography, economic scene, general polity, the Indian Constitution and scientific research, with an emphasis on what an educated person would be expected to know. The scope is unbounded, which is precisely why previous-year questions are the only sane filter - they show you which of the thousand possible topics SSC actually returns to. SSCIntel's bank holds roughly 29,000 real previous-year SSC questions with official answer keys, and GA is the section where that repetition pattern is most visible and most exploitable.
There is no theory to learn for the stenography test. You are dictated a passage for 10 minutes - 100 words per minute for Grade C, 80 for Grade D - and then transcribe it on a computer within a fixed window, with different time allowances for English and Hindi. The test is qualifying, so it adds nothing to your merit position, but failing it ends your candidature regardless of CBT score. Treat it as a daily physical skill: shorthand outlines and typing accuracy built over months, started the day you apply rather than the day the result comes out.
At the CBT stage there is no difference at all - both grades sit the same 200-question paper covering General Intelligence and Reasoning, General Awareness, and English Language and Comprehension. The difference appears only in the skill test, where Grade C dictation runs at 100 words per minute and Grade D at 80, with correspondingly different transcription time limits. Grade C posts also generally sit at a higher pay level and carry a higher upper age limit than Grade D, so check the post table in your cycle's notification.
There is no separate Quantitative Aptitude section, which is the single biggest structural difference from CGL and CHSL. However, arithmetical computation and arithmetical reasoning are explicitly part of the General Intelligence and Reasoning syllabus, so simple number series, arithmetic-based puzzles and basic calculation still appear there. You do not need to prepare advanced arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry or data interpretation for this exam - that time is better spent on English, which carries a hundred marks.
It converts the syllabus into three independent speed targets. With roughly 30 minutes for 50 Reasoning questions you have about 36 seconds each; with roughly 60 minutes for 100 English questions you have about 36 seconds each there too, and reading comprehension passages will eat far more than that, so the vocabulary and grammar questions must be answered almost on sight to fund them. Practise each section against its own clock rather than doing untimed topic study, because a syllabus you know but cannot execute at speed will not convert into marks.
SSC does not publish a fixed topic-wise split, and it genuinely varies between papers, so anyone quoting you an exact number is guessing. What previous-year papers do show consistently is that vocabulary-type questions - synonyms, antonyms, idioms, one-word substitution and spelling - together form a large, fast-scoring block, and that error spotting, sentence improvement, fill in the blanks and one or two comprehension passages make up most of the rest. Prepare by question type and by speed rather than by chasing a predicted count.
Largely yes, with two adjustments. The Reasoning, General Awareness and English question types overlap heavily across SSC exams, and the commission reuses its own question patterns, so previous-year CGL, CHSL and MTS questions are legitimate practice material for all three Stenographer sections. The two adjustments are to skip the Quantitative Aptitude material entirely and to roughly double the English volume you would otherwise do. SSCIntel's bank is drawn from those SSC papers, so topic-wise practice can be pointed at exactly the sections this syllabus tests.
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