Shorthand Shorthand SoHo (2) Category="Artificial scripts"Category="Shorthand systems"Category="Writing systems"
This article is about shorthand (stenography), not to be confused with Steganography (hidden writing).

Shorthand is a general term referring to any abbreviated or symbolic writing method that improves speed of writing or brevity as compared to a standard method of writing the language. The process of writing in shorthand is stenography, from the Greek stenos (narrow/close) and graphy (writing). Many forms of shorthand exist. Typical shorthand systems provide symbols or abbreviations for words and common phrases which allow someone well trained in the system to write as fast as people speak.

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Shorthand was used more widely in the past, before the invention of recording and dictation machines. Until recently shorthand was considered an essential part of secretarial training and was useful for journalists as well. Although the primary use of shorthand has been to record oral dictation of discourse, some systems are used for compact expression. For example, health care professionals may use shorthand notes in medical charts and correspondence. Shorthand notes are typically temporary, intended for later transcription to longhand.

Early history

An interest in shorthand or "short-writing" developed towards the end of the 16th century in England. In 1588 Timothy Bright published his Characterie; An Arte of Shorte, Swifte and Secrete Writing by Character which introduced a system with 500 arbitrary signs resembling words. Bright's book was followed by a number of others, including John Willis's Art of Stenography in 1602, Edmond Willis's An abbreviation of writing by character in 1618, and Thomas Shelton's Short Writing in 1626 (later re-issued as Tachygraphy).

Shelton's system became very popular and is well known because it was used by Samuel Pepys for his diary and for many of his official papers, such as his letter copy books. It was also used by Sir Isaac Newton in some of his notebooks. Shelton borrowed heavily from his predecessors, especially Edmond Willis. Each consonant was represented by an arbitrary but simple symbol, while the five vowels were represented by the relative positions of the surrounding consonants. Thus the symbol for B with symbol for T drawn directly above it represented "bat", while B with T below it meant "but"; top-right represented "e", middle-right "i", and lower-right "o". A vowel at the end of a word was represented by a dot in the appropriate position, while there were additional symbols for initial vowels. This basic system was supplemented by further symbols representing common prefixes and suffixes.

One drawback of Shelton's system was that there was no way to distinguish long and short vowels or dipthongs; so the b-a-t sequence could mean "bat", or "bait", or "bate", while b-o-t might mean "boot", or "bought", or "boat". The reader needed to use the context to work out which alternative was meant. The main advantage of the system was that it was easy to learn and to use. It was extremely popular, and under the two titles of Short Writing and Tachygraphy, it ran to over 20 editions between 1626 and 1710.

Shelton's chief rivals were Theophilus Metcalfe's Stenography or Short Writing (1633) which was in its "55th edition" by 1721, and Jeremiah Rich's system of 1654, which was published under various titles including The penns dexterity compleated (1669).

Rich's system was still in print in 1792 by which time Samuel Taylor had published a new system that was the first English shorthand system that was used all over the English speaking world. Taylor's system was in turn superseded by the Pitman Shorthand. This was first introduced in 1837 by Isaac Pitman and has been improved many times since. Pitman's is still in use in some parts of the English-speaking world, but in the USA (and elsewhere) it has been superseded by the Gregg Shorthand that was first published in 1888 by John Robert Gregg.

Classification

Resemblance to standard writing system

Some systems have signs that are not based on the Latin alphabet, whereas other systems are explicitly intended to resemble the Latin alphabet. Some consider that strictly speaking, only the former are shorthand. There are between one and two dozen examples of the latter in the United States, such as Stenoscript, Stenospeed, and Forkner, which use both symbols and alphabetic characters, to one extent or another.

Vowel representation

It is useful to classify the shorthand systems according to the way in which vowels are represented:

Shape

The basic shapes of shorthand systems such as e.g. Taylor are straight lines, circles and parts of circles. They are placed strictly horizontal, vertical or diagonal. These shorthand systems are the older ones. The first English shorthand system of the 16th century were of this kind. They are sometimes called geometrical shorthand systems.

There are other shorthand systems that try to resemble cursive handwriting. This method was first used in the German Gabelsberger shorthand in the early 19th century, and it is common in all more recent German shorthand systems. The best known English system of this kind is the one of John Robert Gregg (Gregg Shorthand), who knew Gabelsberger's system.

Common English shorthand systems

One of the most widely known forms of shorthand is the Pitman method, developed by Isaac Pitman in 1837. Isaac's brother Benn Pitman, who lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, was responsible for introducing the method to America. The method has been adapted for 15 languages. The system is phonetic as it is the word sounds that are written rather than the letters. For this reason, the system is sometimes known as phonography, meaning 'sound writing' in Greek. One of the reasons this method allows fast transcription is that Vowel sounds are optional when only consonants are needed to determine a word.

Although Pitman's method was extremely popular at first (and is still commonly used, especially in the UK) its popularity has been superseded (especially in the United States) by a method developed by John Robert Gregg in 1888. Gregg's system, like Pitman's, is phonetic, but has the advantage of being "light-line". While Pitman's system uses thick and thin strokes to distinguish related sounds, Gregg's uses only thin strokes and makes some of the same distinctions by the length of the stroke.

Some shorthand systems

Dutton Speedwords is a method of shorthand that had the dual function of also being an international auxilary language.

Other names for shorthand

Other names for shorthand include brachygraphy, tachygraphy and, most commonly, stenography.

See also

References

External links