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A lesson in the lost technology of shorthand (2014)

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Re: A lesson in the lost technology of shorthand (2014)

#31

Post by swsieber »

pjc50 wrote: post #21
gumby wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, you're so right: I live my dexter privilege without even thinking about it My apologies to any sinister folks out there. And this reminds me to take let-handed single-handed operation into account when designing mobile UIs. (Although you still have to pull the fountain pen -- I assume you're talking about the speed increase of writing continuously rather than printing each character).

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "have to pull the pen"; It's been some years since I last used a fountain pen, but there are basically two options when you're left-handed. One is to mirror your hand horizontally, and the other is to mirror in the plane of the nib (which is at 45 degrees to the rules on the paper). So your hand ends up above and to the left of the letter you're writing. I found that much more natu…

The third option is doable though if you write on paper that is thin enough to be seen on the other side - then just write on the back of the paper, reversed :)

Re: A lesson in the lost technology of shorthand (2014)

#32

Post by civilian »

gumby wrote: post #20
alblue wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, you can even learn to spell huge with an h ...

It was a Donald Trump reference. He's kind of archaic too.

Bernie Sanders says YUGE too :-P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V3-GAsMEHQ

Re: A lesson in the lost technology of shorthand (2014)

#34

Post by WalterBright »

jonnathanson wrote: post #6

Shorthand is a fantastic skill to learn, and I really need to learn it. People get annoyed when you are taking notes on a laptop in meetings. It's just a human psychology thing. You seem otherwise engaged. Even if you're fully engaged in the conversation. There's just some hardwired human aversion to believing you're paying attention when you're pecking away. So being able to attend meetings the old fashioned way, wi…

The most effective way is to take notes on a pad or a spiral notebook. Eventually, run them through a scanner.

(How are you going to enter equations, draw arrows and diagrams, etc., with a keyboard? If you have a stylus "works almost as good as a pen!", just use a pen on paper. Yes, I'm old, and I wear a watch, too.)

Re: A lesson in the lost technology of shorthand (2014)

#35

Post by Pitarou »

I once spent a bit of time learning Teeline Shorthand. Teeline is the form of shorthand that British journalists are expected to learn. It's easier to learn, but less efficient, than Gregg or Pitman.

But I reached the conclusion that there was little to be gained from it. Keyboards are so much faster that the only real advantage to using shorthand is obfuscation.

Re: A lesson in the lost technology of shorthand (2014)

#36

Post by spc476 »

pjc50 wrote: post #21
gumby wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, you're so right: I live my dexter privilege without even thinking about it My apologies to any sinister folks out there. And this reminds me to take let-handed single-handed operation into account when designing mobile UIs. (Although you still have to pull the fountain pen -- I assume you're talking about the speed increase of writing continuously rather than printing each character).

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "have to pull the pen"; It's been some years since I last used a fountain pen, but there are basically two options when you're left-handed. One is to mirror your hand horizontally, and the other is to mirror in the plane of the nib (which is at 45 degrees to the rules on the paper). So your hand ends up above and to the left of the letter you're writing. I found that much more natu…

There's another option (which I used when I did calligraphy)---turn the paper 90 degrees clockwise. You end up writing sideways down the paper.

Re: A lesson in the lost technology of shorthand (2014)

#37

Post by luckyt »

Some time ago I wrote an English -> Gregg Shorthand converter: https://luckytoilet.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/an-introduction...

It's not very good, but I'd like to see if anyone can make a better one. It's a shame that shorthand is lost to time and mostly replaced by technology like audio recorders.

Re: A lesson in the lost technology of shorthand (2014)

#38

Post by scribu »

luckyt wrote: post #37

Some time ago I wrote an English -> Gregg Shorthand converter: https://luckytoilet.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/an-introduction... It's not very good, but I'd like to see if anyone can make a better one. It's a shame that shorthand is lost to time and mostly replaced by technology like audio recorders.

That's pretty cool. If one were inclined to take it to the next level of absurd awesomeness, one could employ machine learning:

  1. Feed all the examples from the Gregg dictionary into a neural network.
  2. Generate all the possible positionings for a word.
  3. Have the trained NN pick the best one.
That said, I think doing the opposite conversion, from Gregg to English, would be marginally more useful (and a lot harder, I assume).

Re: A lesson in the lost technology of shorthand (2014)

#39

Post by Jill_the_Pill »

IshKebab wrote: post #23
gumby wrote: post #4

Just a side point from the last line of this article: shorthand (and "cursive") is specifically adapted to the fountain pen: the strokes are continuous and drawn (i.e. you never push the pen, only pull it). Even with a pencil or ball point/byro if you pull rather than push you end up with a much more readable handwriting. And a 10% improvement is YUGE when you have to write everything by hand and there are no copiers…

You do push the pen. Otherwise how would you write an O? like ()? Similarly there are upward strokes in h, b, d, k, m, n, r... I would say that cursive ("joined up handwriting" as I know it) prefers downward strokes, and I don't think it ever begins a letter with an upward stroke.

We were taught to begin all cursive letters with an upward stroke, with even a preceding tail on letters like a and o, as shown here -- http://www.howtowriteincursive.org/tag/cursive-writing/.

Re: A lesson in the lost technology of shorthand (2014)

#40

Post by voltagex_ »

tfm wrote: post #3

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7961385 Top comment starts "While Gregg shorthand is great for English, its not much use for anything technical", which was a timely intervention to stop me running off and implementing a drop-in replacement for the Android keyboard!

I really think there hasn't been enough experimentation with soft (and hard) keyboards - I saw a radial keyboard design for Android (I think it's like the SteamOS controller-keyboard) but I was told the app isn't available anymore.
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