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How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen

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Re: How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen

#31

Post by err4nt »

Osmium wrote: post #29

I wonder how difficult it'd be to write OCR-style software for Gregg. It'd have to be more sophisticated; character recognition alone wouldn't be enough, you'd have to do a bit of Markov modelling with most probable sentences/words too. I guess it's so niche no one will ever do it, but it sounds like a fun project.

I used to have a palm pilot and I LOVED the 'graffiti' input mode with the stylus. You had an alphabet of simplified shapes and it made it very easy to enter something quickly without needing to ‘hunt and peck' on a miniature keyboard for the shift key or using shift keys to change modes.

I wondered why nobody brought gesture-based inout to iOS this way. I don't care about 'handwriting recognition' of my own writing, I want a more efficient input method, even if I have to learn it and practice to be good at it. I'm not content with tapping one button for each character I want to record :S

Re: How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen

#32

Post by Dewie »

thrill wrote: post #6
sikhbeats wrote: post #3

> Gregg eschews the parade of silent letters, like the “y” in “bay” that make English so difficult to learn as a second language. I stopped reading here. I can't take this drivel seriously.

srsly?

As a non-native speaker, I never really tried to reason about what letters are silent or not. It's all seemingly nonsensical, anyway, so I might as well just take it at face value.

Re: How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen

#33

Post by saalweachter »

EdwardCoffin wrote: post #27
sj4nz wrote: post #2

While Gregg shorthand is great for English, its not much use for anything technical. Many of the shorthand idioms are based on the word-sound, not the word-spelling, so it's okay if you're taking notes for yourself, reading someone else's shorthand becomes an exercise in decoding the word in context because you were not there for their experience during note-taking. If you don't stay fresh with your own shorthand, ju…

My understanding is that it was not generally expected that notes taken by one person would be interpretable by another. This is what I've been told by my mother, who learned and used Pitman shorthand. She says she never had to read anyone else's notes, nor did anyone else ever have a need to read hers.

Reading other people's shorthand was common in larger companies. One secretary would take dictation, and pass it off to another secretary to type it up.

Typing is slower than taking dictation, so you'd potentially have multiple typists typing up the same person's dictated letters at once.

Re: How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen

#34

Post by GrinningFool »

doorhammer wrote: post #24
jonnathanson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are specific professions in which it comes in handy. Journalism is one of them. Every now and then, you'll encounter someone who is willing to go on the record, but for whatever reason, doesn't feel comfortable being taped. (And by "every now and then," I mean somewhat greater than half the time.) And a lot of people are put off by the act of typing into a keyboard or tablet while you're speaking to them, even…

I know a few people who maintain eye contact while typing, for instance, while I'm running a meeting. Man, it always feels creepy to me. Am I the only one that gets that feeling?

To me, it's worse. It sends the message "I'm pretending really hard to focus on what you're saying, but I'm really doing something else right in front of you!"

I say this as someone who can maintain eye contact and type while giving attention to the person I'm looking atit.

It makes people more uncomfortable than simply looking at the screen while you work and talk.

Re: How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen

#35

Post by xrjn »

err4nt wrote: post #31
Osmium wrote: post #29

I wonder how difficult it'd be to write OCR-style software for Gregg. It'd have to be more sophisticated; character recognition alone wouldn't be enough, you'd have to do a bit of Markov modelling with most probable sentences/words too. I guess it's so niche no one will ever do it, but it sounds like a fun project.

I used to have a palm pilot and I LOVED the 'graffiti' input mode with the stylus. You had an alphabet of simplified shapes and it made it very easy to enter something quickly without needing to ‘hunt and peck' on a miniature keyboard for the shift key or using shift keys to change modes. I wondered why nobody brought gesture-based inout to iOS this way. I don't care about 'handwriting recognition' of my own writing,…

I think an excellent input method for mobiles is Swiftkey. It has incredible accuracy, and it learns really fast as to what and how you type. Its intelligence beat all other keyboards that I tried, and I'm able to peak at over 60 WPM using SK with two fingers, and 40 WPM with 1 finger and flow. However, it gets tricky as soon as you get sloppy or start writing technical stuff, so I tend to stick with the traditional tapping method of input.

There is a little bit of a learning curve to get optimal speed, but once you learn all the nuances and the shortcuts, it gets absolutely great. Typing long and detailed text is now reasonable on a phone, and quickly replying to something takes no time at all thanks to flow in my opinion.

Re: How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen

#36

Post by saalweachter »

BonsaiDen wrote: post #7
thrill wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

srsly?

At least for me - a native German speaker with English as a self taught second language - I find that the `y` in bay actually makes it easier to figure out the correct pronunciation. Since `a` is pronounced as `ah` in German, just having `ba` would make the `a` sound like the one in `bra`, which would make it hard to distinguish between `ba(y)` and `ba(h)` when first learning the language. Removing the y's would also…

The vowels in Gregg shorthand refer to one sound only. So it's more like writing 'bā' instead of 'bay'.

Re: How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen

#37

Post by ZenPro »

muaddirac wrote: post #9

I don't see the utility of shorthand anymore. If you're just taking short notes, you don't need to write 225wpm...and if you've recorded everything, then you can listen to the recording later and take notes or type up a transcript verbatim. It would seem better to learn a stenography system so you don't waste time inputting actual text, which surely you would need to do anyway? (How is the time the author saves writi…

Good luck with that as a Court Reporter.

Almost all journalists start out at regional or local publications covering Courts. It is considered the apprenticeship of mainstream news journalism.

Re: How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen

#38

Post by scrollaway »

jamesli wrote: post #16

The shorthand is based on sounds, not spellings. So the difficulty is that the brain has to translate spelling into sounds first, which is a great barrier to overcome. There is a similar fast writing system (速写）in Chinese. I tried to learn it for a year while I was in high school, but gave it up eventually. Other than the extra difficulties of logograms vs phonograms, another barrier is that one need to translate the…

> So the difficulty is that the brain has to translate spelling into sounds first, which is a great barrier to overcome.

It doesn't look like it's meant to be used to copy written text, but to take notes that have already been spoken, which is exactly the opposite to what you're describing - When I speak and you take notes, you essentially turn sounds into spelling.

Re: How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen

#39

Post by danohuiginn »

shadowfox wrote: post #26
6d0debc071 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old manuals are on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/1916GreggShorthandManual-5thVers...

Just want to add that there are other shorthands which are pretty solid (and more easily available). For example, Pitmans: http://www.long-live-pitmans-shorthand.org.uk/

I'd advise against Pitmans, unless you plan to take it very seriously. Pitmans is one of the more complicated forms of shorthand, and relies on differentiating between hard and gentle lines.

I found Teeline, for instance, much easier to get going with.

Re: How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen

#40

Post by NoahTheDuke »

fsiefken wrote: post #30
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #19

For programmers, I don't think shorthand is the right technology to learn - stenographic typing has the same kind of advantages and speed, and directly inputs to the computer. Learning shorthand does make stenographic typing easier to learn (and vice-versa), since it's the same sort of syllable-based contraction.

For a stenographic typing solution that can work on a pc check Plover: http://plover.stenoknight.com/

Here's the 2013 PyCon talk given by one of the Plover developers, Mirabai Knight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g
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