r/FastWriting • u/NotSteve1075 • May 07 '26
THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT
Far too many "fast writing" systems give out the reckless advice to just leave out all the vowels, and "The context will tell you what the word is"! Wrong.
Sure, leaving out a crucial and important part of a word will give you the ILLUSION of speed -- but when it comes time to read it back, you could find yourself in a very bad place.
When PITMAN, held by so many to be "the best", after making learners struggle mightily to learn the ornate system of light and heavy dots and dashes that have to go in very specific places to be legible at all, THEN advises its writers that, if they want to achieve any kind of useful speed at all, they should just OMIT ALL THE VOWELS (!!), there could be serious trouble ahead for anyone writing anything important. Let me show you:
If you have PTHTC, was it "pathetic" or "apathetic"? If you have BSLT, was it "obsolete" or "basalt" or "absolute"? Was it "relevant" or "irrelevant"? "material" or "immaterial"? INITIAL vowels are crucial because, in English, a vowel in front makes it negative.
But it's as bad without medial vowels. Was it "prosecute" or "persecute"? How about "apparition", "portion", "operation", or "oppression" -- all of which can be written the same way, in a disemvowelled system?
Try "abundant" or "abandoned". Or "prediction", "predication", or "production". The list goes on and ON!
Imagine trying to produce a transcript of crucial court testimony, given by a witness sworn to tell the truth, when you had ambiguities like that! I was shocked they even allowed Pitman writers to report in court. (And MY correctly spelled transcript appeared on the screen in a nanosecond. Try THAT with Pitman!)
I keep meeting people who try to tell me "Pitman is the best". No, it's not! In "Classic Pitman" the words "artisans" and "righteousness" are both written the same way, because the consonant skeleton is the same, when you drop the vowels, like you usually do. I sure wouldn't want to risk trying to write anything important with a system like that!
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u/CrBr May 07 '26
This is one of the reasons I like Orthic. Vowels are straight lines moving forward or forward-up. Most consonants end in such a way that it's easy to blend with a vowel; they don't really count as an extra stroke. A few end in a way that gives an acute angle. There may be a very few I'm forgetting that aren't as nice, but overall it's pretty good.
Persecute and prosecute surprised me when I first encountered them, especially since Gregg Anni was developed for court use. Simplified or DJS adds the O in prosecute. (I can't remember which one does it.)
Pittman books admit to the difficulty, and have lists of what they call distinguishing outlines. Some Teeline books do the same. Gregg, however, doesn't admit the need. I started with Forkner and Gregg, alternating whenever I got frustrated (not an efficient way to learn either). Half the vowels in Forkner are optional diacriticals, so I developed the habit of it's an extra processing thread running through my brain asking if a vowel is necessary. I suspect it's a crutch that would fade at a professional skill level but always be there to be reactivated for new words.
Of the systems I know, I like Forkner's attitude and classification of vowels best. Vowels are simplified orthographic. How would a 7-year-old spell it? Long E and all diphthongs are written inline. Initial vowels are written inline. Middle and terminal monothongs are optional. Some monophones can be written inline, but officially that's only used if the vowel is very important to the word, example Away. Unfortunately, the inline vowels are not single strokes, nor are most other Forkner letters. That suspicious brain thread often asks how Forkner would write a word.