More About Shorthand

[livingdeb]

Last night out of curiosity I looked at my Gregg shorthand book. One way this method makes writing quicker is that it's more phonetic than regular writing. For example, there's only one (quick) way to indicate an f sound. You'd use it not only for "frog," but also for "phone" and "rough." But then there are several symbols for a because that letter is used to create several different sounds. So you don't need to double any consonants or add a silent e or anything like that to indicate which a sound is required. I am a big, big fan of phonetics.

Then it also has some symbols for commonly used words. But the learning curve isn't as crazy as it could be: just put a double line under the word to indicate that it's capitalized (instead of learning another whole set of symbols for the capitalized letters).

Interestingly, a dot at the beginning of a word indicates an h sound, but one at the end of a word indicates an ing sound. This is because the former generally occurs at the beginning of a word and the latter at the end. I don't know what they do about exceptions (such as inhabit, things).

This system seems mostly to make sense to me, which I like and which I didn't expect. And I seem to have a pretty good book for it. So if I don't much like Teeline, or don't like it a lot more than Gregg, I may change my mind and learn Gregg instead.

**

Today at lunch I went to the library and learned a little about the history of shorthand or speedwriting. Want to guess how old it is?

It's supposedly mentioned in the Bible. It was popular in Roman times. Of course it wasn't as fast back then because one would write with a stylus on a tablet dipped in wax.

It lost popularity during Medieval times. In Victorian times, hundreds of systems were created. And now, well, I never see anyone asking for it job announcements anymore.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I understand that Cicero's slave-stenographer developed what became a famous system of shorthand (the first for Latin) in his attempts to keep up with Cicero's staggering output of speeches, letters, etc.

I would say it is definitely not something with much job value at this point, even if one were wanting to position oneself as some kind of admin assistant. There are shorthand/court reporters, I guess.

sally

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

(I don't expect this skill to help me get a job. Even if I learn it I wouldn't expect it to come up in job interviews or anything like that. I'd just like to know how. The same way I'd like to know ASL for situations where we can see but not hear or not make noise.)

[(Anonymous)]

Right, I assumed it was something you would be doing for fun.

Learning ASL is fairly time-consuming, but it's very easy to learn the alphabet and with some practice, one can become reasonably quick with it. (Of course, using it requires one's companion(s) to know it also, unlike shorthand.)