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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

#81

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

emilga wrote: post #76
sj4nz wrote: 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…

Jill Price (the Woman who remembers everything)[0] also compulsively kept a journal. What is it about the connection between writing instrument and human brain that doesn't extend to QWERTY? Price also didn't refer back to her journals from what I can tell.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Price

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

#82

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

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…

If you have time to learn 200 WPM stenography then you have a lot going for you, but why not become a professional tennis player or a concert pianist instead? The promise of coding or writing at the speed of thought is actually not so good, it's like that horror story of the monkey's paw actually. Of course if you can't speak, a talking steno would be ideal for participating in a conversation.

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

#83

Post by tps12 »

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?

"Maintaining eye contact" is pretty creepy regardless of whatever else is going on.

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

#84

Post by shard »

davidgerard wrote: post #62
jonnathanson wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's kind of weird that people would go "on the record" but not want to be recorded. But there's something about pulling out a tape recorder (or in my case, an iPhone with a recording app) that freaks people out. I think part of this fear stems from the age we live in, with the 24 hour news cycle and "gotcha" journalism. People half suspect you're going to use something they said against them, as if it's a poli…

Yeah. I do press stuff as a volunteer from time to time, and I've learnt the art of speaking for half an hour with no part-sentence being an abusable pull-quote, after a few times where precisely that happened. (Simple method: when speaking of tricky matters, twist your grammar and pepper with adjectives and adverbs. Always follow with a pullquote you'd like used. Use variations on your favoured quote a few times.)

This sounds interesting, but it's not clear how it's done. Could you give a few examples?

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

#85

Post by desipenguin »

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #81
emilga wrote: post #76

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. 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…

Jill Price (the Woman who remembers everything)[0] also compulsively kept a journal. What is it about the connection between writing instrument and human brain that doesn't extend to QWERTY? Price also didn't refer back to her journals from what I can tell. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Price

This might be of some help : http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/writing-and-re...

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

#86

Post by fardoche »

I remember finding a textbook on Gregg shorthand in my grandmother's attic when I was 10 years old. It fascinated me (secret writing! esoteric knowledge!) and I spent a few afternoons practicing and inventing my own abbreviations, even using it to take notes in school once or twice, but my family bought a home computer not long after that, and all my energy went into learning BASIC.

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

#87

Post by mkd1964 »

jdewald wrote: post #14
BonsaiDen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I thought that at first as well (about the potential confusion), but then recalled that most of the "possible" alternatives aren't real English words: "bah" is really only a sort of exclamation and the sound of a sheep, not something you'd really have appear in an interview. As you pointed out, "awa(h)", "ga(h)", "sla(h)" and "sta(h)" aren't English words [1] that you'd confuse in context so "away", "gay", "slay" and…

The 'a' sound in "Slaw" is a bit tricky. it rhymes somewhat with the 'o' sound in 'ostrich', 'ought' or 'taught', which are written with the symbol for an 'o'. Oddly though, the word "Father" is written with an 'a'. If it's really necessary to distinguish between these sounds, Gregg Shorthand does allow for diacritical marks over vowels, but they are rarely used, since the meaning is usually clear from the context (and they slow you down).

It may help to realize that John Robert Gregg was Irish - so imagine his somewhat British pronunciation of vowels. Since Gregg shorthand is written phonetically, the words "father" and "farther" are written pretty much the same . That becomes a bit confusing to an American speaker of English.

I taught myself shorthand in high school. I love foreign languages and found it fascinating. A "Secret Language" like someone said above.

But I agree with one of the other posters, if you do not use it often, you will find it very difficult to do well. The basics of Gregg shorthand are incredibly simple, but it is another thing entirely to master - to be able to write quickly and accurately takes practice. Still, it is not impossible and you use it quite readily only knowing the basics. Unfortunately it has become a lost art except to a very few.

It would be quite an undertaking to write OCR software for Gregg shorthand because the writer has a lot of freedom to construct abbreviations on the spot or join several small words together when convenient (rather like native Germans can come up with compound words you won't find in a dictionary). The other problem would be clarity. While Gregg Shorthand doesn't have rules like Pittman for placing certain strokes on or above a line, proportion is quite important because several letters share common shapes ("n and "m", "p and b", "t and d", "f and v" are all quite similar but vary in length or height).

So the writer would have to be consistent in their proportions and the software would need to be able to learn the writer's style.

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