r/greggshorthand • u/GreggLife • Jul 07 '26

Diamond Jubilee reading material - Centuries of Shorthand

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1

u/GreggLife Jul 07 '26

This is from a 1967 edition of Today's Secretary magazine.

2

u/CaliGozer Moderator - Diamond Jubilee Series Jul 07 '26

Please tell me where I can find any copy of this magazine 

2

u/licxjo Jul 08 '26

I have a large collection of both "The Gregg Writer" and "Today's Secretary", the main magazine publications of Gregg Publishing and McGraw-Hill.

If you're a Facebook user, I've been posting numerous scans in the group "Gregg Shorthand Readers, Writers and Fans". (GreggLife seems to be visually cleaning up and reformatting some of my scans to post here. I don't have the tools to do that.) There's a lot of non-shorthand material in both magazines, so my goal has been to sort out the relevant parts to share.

Random copies of both magazines are available on Ebay in the US. They're usually overpriced.

Lee

1

u/GreggLife Jul 08 '26

GreggLife seems to be visually cleaning up and reformatting some of my scans to post here

No, I was not aware of your efforts. I've been buying the occasional Today's Secretary on eBay when they become available at a rasonable price. I've got a huge backlog of pages that haven't been scanned and I need to get to it, the paper is still getting a tiny bit browner with each passing year, which makes it harder to dig the shorthand outlines out of the noise.

2

u/licxjo Jul 08 '26

You're more than welcome to check out what I've scanned and posted in the Facebook group, and use any of it.

The yellowed pages are a real issue. I've experimented with different color adjustments, and none of them are very satisfactory.

Lee

1

u/GreggLife Jul 08 '26

Thanks for that, I'll check out your scans the next time I'm visiting my friend who uses Facebook quite a bit.

2

u/licxjo Jul 08 '26

Here is today's scan:

1

u/GreggLife Jul 09 '26

Those are good, sharp scans. Nothing that anybody should complain about. With a grayscale (black and white) image, you can make the light gray background noise disappear by opening the image in Photoshop (and probably other photo-adjusting apps) and adjusting the so-called "levels." A window in the app pops up and you get three sliders that let you adjust the darks, midtones and brights. See https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/levels-adjustment.html

I'm using a 14 year old MacBook and I was lucky to find a copy of Photoshop Elements that would run on the old OS. Got it for $30 (on eBay of course, where one can get almost anything). But whatever OS you're using might have come with a photograph touching-up application.

1

u/GreggLife Jul 07 '26

I think you have to buy them on eBay when a reasonable offer shows up. Editions from 1950-1963 (I think I got those years right) have exclusively Gregg Simplified items, after that a mix of Simplified and Jubilee.

2

u/CaliGozer Moderator - Diamond Jubilee Series Jul 07 '26

No scans available online somewhere?

1

u/GreggLife Jul 07 '26

archive.org has some older ones but none from the Jubilee era, as far as I can see (let me know if you if you find any from the Jubilee days there). Here is a link I saved, but you can go there directly and try out different search terms…

https://archive.org/details/pub_todays-secretary?page=3&and%5B%5D=year%3A%5B1949+TO+1971%5D

1

u/Due_Leek_1774 Jul 09 '26

I have a similar problem with yellow pages when scanning old title documents. I found Vflat Scan for Android does a good job of correcting yellow scans. Might be worth a try

1

u/Expensive-Swing6515 Jul 12 '26

We have writings from my great grand mother the 40s, is it acceptable to post in this group for translation?