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Shorthand

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Re: Shorthand

#11

Post by twiss »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #3

My mother taught Pitman shorthand (as well as related secretarial skills) for many years until probably the early nineties. My father still has many of her old textbooks, and some of them are novels translated into shorthand for reading and comprehension practice. They're kind of odd things to look at - page after page of squiggles that are somehow clearly artificial rather than natural orthography. Also, it is inter…

To be fair, there are also lots of Wikipedia articles explaining things that are still common knowledge today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen

Re: Shorthand

#12

Post by adrianN »

js8 wrote: post #8
tigerlily wrote: post #6

I wonder what the fastest achievable words per minute is with a modern shorthand?

In Czech Wikipedia, they mention a Czech record from 1957 of 200 words/min. They compare normal writing 20-40 words/min, normal speech 70 words/min, TV speech 80-100 words/min. So a well-designed modern shorthand could probably go over 200 words/min.

20-40 words/min is pretty fast for normal writing.

Re: Shorthand

#13

Post by fsiefken »

I've been looking into alphanumeric shorthand, it has the advantage of not learning new scripts or characters and easy with a keyboard. But then my keyboard layout (dvorak-iu) is not optimized for this and I have to redesign it as otherwise it might slow me down.

Another interesting one is Quickscript, technically not a shorthand but you can write quicker and it's phonetics based.

Yet another nice technique is using a specialized steno keyboard like Velotype keyboard (invented in my country)

Re: Shorthand

#16

Post by jdietrich »

emblaegh wrote: post #7

Any one knows a good (preferably free online) source for learning shorthand? I was recently interested in learning it, but was shocked by how little decent online material there is about it.

If it's for your own personal use, I'd suggest Teeline Gold - The Course Book. Teeline isn't quite as efficient as Pitman or Gregg, but it's much easier to learn. It's essentially a progressive enhancement of standard handwriting and offers a useful improvement in speed even if you only partially learn the system. It's the standard method taught on British journalism courses, on the pragmatic basis that many journalists will primarily rely on digital recorders and won't get the full benefit from a more efficient but more difficult shorthand system.

https://www.amazon.com/Teeline-Gold-Coursebook-Jean-Clarkson...

Re: Shorthand

#17

Post by cponeill »

Growing up I was always astounded by how fast my Mother could take notes and remember so many details based on what looked like a bunch of crazy scribbles to me. I had always wanted to learn it but never took the time as I got older. Might be something worth checking out.

Re: Shorthand

#18

Post by monkeynotes »

twiss wrote: post #11
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #3

My mother taught Pitman shorthand (as well as related secretarial skills) for many years until probably the early nineties. My father still has many of her old textbooks, and some of them are novels translated into shorthand for reading and comprehension practice. They're kind of odd things to look at - page after page of squiggles that are somehow clearly artificial rather than natural orthography. Also, it is inter…

To be fair, there are also lots of Wikipedia articles explaining things that are still common knowledge today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen

I don't think the point was that Wikipedia exclusively documents obscure knowledge that used to be common. Wikipedia obviously contains information about all the things, but shorthand used to be very common and it's funny to see it now observed as a curiosity on HN and referenced on Wikipedia.

Re: Shorthand

#19

Post by imglorp »

If anyone is intrigued by constructed scripts like shorthand, there are some more approachable, practical ones that don't need years of study.

The poet George Bernard Shaw was famously irritated by English orthography, especially spelling, and pushed for reform. To that end he first invented a phonetic transcription of English which he called Shavian [1] and published book written in it as a fun demonstration [2].

Starting with Shavian, Kingsley Read then improved the alphabet into a more practical form called Quikscript [3], a little more cursive and designed for handwriting. I've used it for journalling and there's a few users out there [4] if you search.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet

2. https://www.amazon.com/Shaw-Alphabet-Androcles-Lion/dp/B0000...

3. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/quikscript.htm

4. https://www.reddit.com/r/Quickscript

Re: Shorthand

#20

Post by andyjohnson0 »

monkeynotes wrote: post #18
twiss wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, there are also lots of Wikipedia articles explaining things that are still common knowledge today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen

I don't think the point was that Wikipedia exclusively documents obscure knowledge that used to be common. Wikipedia obviously contains information about all the things, but shorthand used to be very common and it's funny to see it now observed as a curiosity on HN and referenced on Wikipedia.

> but shorthand used to be very common and it's funny to see it now observed as a curiosity on HN and referenced on Wikipedia

That was indeed my point.

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