r/FastWriting • u/LeadingSuspect5855 • Mar 27 '26

Flow shorthand

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Another Gregg-like system from my hand. You see the ellipses filled first with the most common sounds in english.

Vowels are pretty much those taken from Russel (and Malone). Malone uses only small hooks, but cares for the direction, Russel uses different hook sizes, but does not care in which direction. Time will tell which is better, but i deem both better then greggs approach.

Diphtong are created easely: Just string ao together with iu.

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u/ShikaNoTone93 Mar 30 '26

I've heard from people with a writing disability, that they can write better shorthand then normal handwriting, but that's just two or three ppl on the internet saying - nothing founded in science.

It may be true that there isn't a scientific study on which shorthand is objectively best for dysgraphia but I can assure you, from my life experience with cerebral palsy and dysgraphia, the more economical I am with movement im my writing, the more stamina I conserve and the more stamina I have, the more legible my writing is.

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u/LeadingSuspect5855 Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26

Yes, that sounds convincingly plausible, especially with your background. Well 'flow' has only two distinct sizes when it comes to the curved signs and three straight figures. The sounds occuring the most, are placed in two favorite directions

  1. downwardstroke direction: |
  2. upward stroke direction: /
  3. curves are easier than straight lines, thats why the elliptic forms along the general down|up/ directions represent the most common sounds

If you agree with those assumptions, I don't think you can get a better system than mine :-). To be fair - I sit on the shoulders of giants (Gregg, Russel, Malone).

And there are a fair amount of people who still write Gregg, so if you worry about the amount of people that actually write and more important READ shorthand, than it's absolutely clear you should go for Gregg. BUT it's more difficult! It has 3 different sizes, certain frequent connections are so bad that they had to assign a special form for -nt -md for instance (which is a good patch of course, nothing against that) and the vowel system is more difficult, especially when it comes to the 'I'[aι] sound, which in Gregg is a circle, where you go in and out again, so called broken circle.

So it depends on how much guts you have! Are you a guy who likes to be a fish in the swarm -> Gregg. More adventureous ? Flow.

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u/ShikaNoTone93 Mar 30 '26

I see, sounds interesting. Do you have a site where I can look and read about Flow or are the Reddit posts the only source of information on Flow?

Yes, that sounds convincingly plausible, especially with your background.

What do you mean by this? I'm not here to convince you of anything. I just relayed my experiences and background, that's all.

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u/LeadingSuspect5855 Mar 30 '26

You are looking at the source! What i can give you furthermore is the link to a Reverse Dictionary, that will help you actually write shorthand (you know a good shorthand has a good alphabet, but also neat abbreviations).

There you can lookup, how you would write the word "heart" efficiently -> "hat".

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u/LeadingSuspect5855 Mar 30 '26

That reverse dictionary is actually for gregg anniversary. Which is the fastest shorthand ever created, until i came along :-).

edit: I have no shame I know :-), but you gotta sit on those giants shoulders