By Hanife Sevinc
ISTANBUL (AA) - A Turkish group on Friday won top awards at an international keyboarding championships in Italy.
Celal Askin broke his own record in the text production category for seniors and won a gold medal by typing 156 words a minute.
Organized by Intersteno, the International Federation for Information and Communication Processing, the championships were held on July 13-19 in Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, Italy.
Ilyas Pamukcu won second place in the text production category for juniors by typing 117 words a minute, while Mehmet Kurt won third place with 113 words.
Hakan Kurt won world championship award in the shorthand and Speech Capturing category for seniors with 321 words a minute, while Celal Askin got second-place honors with 320 words.
Onur Demirbas also won the world championship in the real-time transcription category for pupils, while Celal Askin won second place for seniors and Hakan Kurt got third place, and Ilyas Pamukcu won third place for juniors.
Celal Askin also won third place in a combination list for seniors.
Seckin Kose, head of the Turkish group, said this year the national team raised its gold medal tally from 94 to 97, including 39 world records.
Intersteno is a non-profit founded in 1887 to celebrate 300 years of modern stenography.
In addition to the keyboarding championships, Intersteno -- founded in 1187 -- holds a conference internationally, usually in Europe, every two years.
*Writing and contributions by Erdogan Cagatay Zontur