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How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen

theatlantic.com

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

#71
post #65
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you aware that less than 15% of English words have irregular pronunciation (which is not to say the "regular" rules aren't baroque). And the pronunciation of "bay" is certainly regular: it's not that "y" is silent, but rather "ay" is a digraph that is pronounced in a regular way.

> (which is not to say the "regular" rules aren't baroque)

Well that's my point! I haven't found it useful to figure out or reason about whatever regular rules there are, because they are baroque to the point that I find it easier to just go by intuition, for the most part.

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

#72
post #44

I was really hoping this article would end with the author revealing the Livescribe pen could expand Gregg shorthand written with it into standard characters on a computer.

Wait so that wasn't the point of using it? The author mentions custom OCR so I assumed he was using some sort of Gregg OCR solution.

Does he mention a custom one? I just saw this part: But it doesn’t work for me, I explain, because even though I’m recording this interview with the latest model Sky wifi smartpen, I’m taking notes using a 19th Century technology called Gregg shorthand.

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

#73

I was really hoping this article would end with the author revealing the Livescribe pen could expand Gregg shorthand written with it into standard characters on a computer.

It would have to be a author-guided OCR though as the same symbols can represent different words.

Doesn't this have audio?

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

#74
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a native english speaker I'd make the same assumptions about "ba" as you would. I'm not sure what accent "ba" would be pronounced "bay" in.

Maybe it works because there is no english word written 'ba', and in fact no english word that's 'b' followed by vowel(s) and nothing else, except for 'bay'. So there's no other word it could be. But yeah, the extreme form of gregg shorthand definitely seems, from the OP, to rely on lots of contextual knowledge for it's concision. That seems to be it's strategy, eliminate letters where contextual knowledge will suffi…

> and in fact no english word that's 'b' followed by vowel(s) and nothing else

  "beau", "bi", "be", "bee", "bao", "boa"
came to mind off the top of my head and are all in the dictionary; there are probably others. Of these, "be", "bee", and "boa" should be pretty non-controversial both in terms of "word" and "English".

For the original issue, "ba" pronounced with the actual letter names does in fact sound like "b-ay". Whether that's what Gregg shorthand does, I can't tell.

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

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I do this pretty often, and people pretty much always complain. Less so people my age (college-aged), but a lot of professors, TAs, and my parents all claim that it's entirely too creepy. My parents have actually told me that they'd prefer if I just looked at the screen the whole time. But on the other hand, why would I look at what I'm typing? I already know what it says- I hardly have to read it again. A good typis…

I wonder if college age folks are more likely to be okay with it or if they're less likely to say something about it? Probably some combination of the two, I'd guess

I usually type mostly looking at the screen and then glance up and make eye contact or nod during pauses, to re-establish that I know the person is there and I'm paying attention to them.

I don't think it's so much a practical thing as purely social. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with looking at a person while you type. It just doesn't seem socially typical. It might be the normal thing to do at some point, in which case I'll adapt. It just doesn't seem to be the case now. It'd be interesting to do research on this, though ,and see if there's a significantly different perception between age groups.

I'd guess that most folks on this board are pretty proficient touch typists, and could look wherever they want while they're typing. Even if you're only reasonably good at touch typing, you're probably not going to mangle the words to the point where you can't run a spell check over it to fix most of your mistakes.

I'll personally probably stick to mostly looking at the screen for now, since it seems like more people are made uncomfortable by looking at them, than looking at the screen, but it's interesting to think about where it might go.

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

#76
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is largely why note taking is a two pass process for me. The first is the pen and paper notes taken while speaking with someone else. The second is the process of transcribing and editing those notes onto some digital medium. I end up with a really nicely fleshed out document covering much more information, much more thoroughly. For example, for a more complex point in a discussion I may add an additional paragr…

If you're not reviewing your notes at least once after you've taken them, you shouldn't even bother taking them. I don't think there are very many exceptions for write-once-and-never-read notes. Note amplification is stronger if your intent is to explain the notes to someone else.

> If you're not reviewing your notes at least once after you've taken them, you shouldn't even bother taking them.

Beethoven would disagree with you,

    Beethoven left behind an enormous number of sketchbooks.
    Yet he himself said he never looked at a sketchbook
    when he actually wrote his compositions. When asked, "Why
    then, do you keep a sketchbook?" he is reported to
    answered, "If I don't write it down immediately I forget it
    right away. If I put it into a sketchbook I never forget it, and
    I never have to look it up again.
Source: http://books.google.no/books?id=1YN3kc31nqAC&pg=PA148&lpg=PA...

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

#77
post #76
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not reviewing your notes at least once after you've taken them, you shouldn't even bother taking them. I don't think there are very many exceptions for write-once-and-never-read notes. Note amplification is stronger if your intent is to explain the notes to someone else.

> If you're not reviewing your notes at least once after you've taken them, you shouldn't even bother taking them. Beethoven would disagree with you, Beethoven left behind an enormous number of sketchbooks. Yet he himself said he never looked at a sketchbook when he actually wrote his compositions. When asked, "Why then, do you keep a sketchbook?" he is reported to answered, "If I don't write it down immediately I fo…

Yes, he may have disagreed, but most of us aren't savants with a perfect recall strategy such as this because, well, we need the inhibition to support other functions.

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

#78
post #76
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not reviewing your notes at least once after you've taken them, you shouldn't even bother taking them. I don't think there are very many exceptions for write-once-and-never-read notes. Note amplification is stronger if your intent is to explain the notes to someone else.

> If you're not reviewing your notes at least once after you've taken them, you shouldn't even bother taking them. Beethoven would disagree with you, Beethoven left behind an enormous number of sketchbooks. Yet he himself said he never looked at a sketchbook when he actually wrote his compositions. When asked, "Why then, do you keep a sketchbook?" he is reported to answered, "If I don't write it down immediately I fo…

This is also true for me, I almost always took notes in college but it was rare for me to read them except to retrieve formulas that weren't in the course notes.

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

#79
post #48
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A friend of mine swears by Swiftkey, too. They seem to have taken a turn for the evil on Android recently, though: still usable as ever, but bugging you every once in a while to try out new themes, or asking for overly broad permissions.

Hi there,

You can actually turn off notifications from the app by: 1) SK settings 2) Advanced 3) Uncheck the box

SwiftKey has also stated they are working on performance updates in the next release: http://swiftkey.com/en/blog/swiftkey-5-performance/

As far as the notification at the top of the screen this is a notification provided by the Android OS and cannot be turned off or hidden.

Cheers,

Ryan Community Manager @ SwiftKey

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

#80
post #71
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware that less than 15% of English words have irregular pronunciation (which is not to say the "regular" rules aren't baroque). And the pronunciation of "bay" is certainly regular: it's not that "y" is silent, but rather "ay" is a digraph that is pronounced in a regular way.

> (which is not to say the "regular" rules aren't baroque) Well that's my point! I haven't found it useful to figure out or reason about whatever regular rules there are, because they are baroque to the point that I find it easier to just go by intuition, for the most part.

Well that's what most people do -- it's the regularity that allows you to have an intuition. For all the baroqueness, eqrtlk will never be an English word and ghoti will never be pronounced like fish (despite claims to the contrary). I didn't mean to suggest that you should try to learn the rules from a book; I just meant you are wasting effort if you learn the spelling and pronunciation as completely independent items.
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