In two lateralized tachistoscopic lexical decision experiments at different exposure durations, we found for high-frequency function words written in stenography a shift from a RVF advantage at long exposures to a LVF advantage at short exposures, while for the same words written in print a strong RVF effect persisted. We suggest that a reduction of exposure duration, together with the strong visuo-spatial features in stenography, active right-hemispheric word recognition. Stenography, a non-orthographic and syllabic-ideographic writing system, could be a model to investigate different hemispheric reading processes in Western subjects.