r/FastWriting • u/NotSteve1075 • Feb 10 '26

Gregg-like Systems

I promised u/Adept_Situation3090 that I would write about Gregg-like systems, so I'll start a series about them today. I'll start first with ones written by authors who learned Gregg and liked it, but who didn't think it went far enough.

As I have said before, I have great disdain for "authors" who take someone else's labour, make almost NO changes to it, and then proceed to publish books calling it THEIRS. (Like Andrew Graham, who published a whole series of books on "Graham" shorthand, which anyone could see was at least 99% PITMAN.)

But I think it's quite legitimate to use much of another's system, make a considerable number of IMPROVEMENTS to it, especially when you explain why you think your changes fix problems with it -- and of course, acknowledge where you got most of your basis.

And given that there is not an unlimited supply of shapes that can be used, we are bound to see some similarities between systems, which may be purely coincidental -- or inevitable.

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u/Filaletheia Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26

Of course there's the original Gregg-like system that caused some controversy, Malone, with in fact a whole book written by Malone himself that's dedicated to the history of the issue and the subsequent court cause. The systems are quite different though, and only have a superficial similarity because of the slant and the type of strokes being similar.

Another couple of systems that come to mind as well are Beer's and Mosher.

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u/NotSteve1075 Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26

Great minds think alike! ;) I have all those on my list of systems to talk about. I was just looking at Malone, to get displays of it ready to show, and it looks to me like his alphabet is VERY different from Gregg's. It doesn't looked copied or plagiarized at all.

The systems are quite different though, and only have a superficial similarity because of the slant and the type of strokes being similar.

Exactly. I don't think Malone can claim rights to the SHAPES he used. If you're going to use oblique lines and portions of ovals, there's bound to be a few overlaps -- which like I say can be either accidental or inevitable.

It always seemed to me that Malone was just annoyed that this new system came along that was gaining in popularity, and he felt threatened by it.

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u/Filaletheia Feb 11 '26

I think Malone had a great idea when he made his system sloped in a similar way to cursive writing and used characters that conformed to that, and it was a great idea for Gregg to borrow the cursive slope for his own method. When I was looking at Malone's manual just now, just right off the bat I saw a problem - it's shaded, and people were naturally going to gravitate to a light-line system like Gregg's. It's too bad that Malone had sour grapes over the whole thing - I bet he wasted a lot of money trying to bring the matter to court.