Shorthand

:This article is about shorthand (stenography), not to be confused with steganography (hidden writing).

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.

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Vowel representation

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

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• 'Normal' vowel signs (no fundamental distinction between vowel signs and consonant signs), e.g. Gregg.
• Other ways of expressing the vowels:
• expression of the first vowel by the height of the word in relation to the line, e.g. Pitman;
• optional expression of the vowels by diacritics added to the word, e.g. Pitman;
• expression by the width of the joining stroke that leads to the following consonant sign, the height of the following consonant sign in relation to the preceding one, and the line pressure of the following consonant sign, e.g. in most German shorthand systems;
• no expression of the vowels at all except for a dot before the word for any initial vowel and a dot after the word for any ending vowel, e.g. Taylor.

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.

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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.

Related Topics:
German - Gabelsberger shorthand - John Robert Gregg - Gregg Shorthand

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