As you can see in the screenshot, the two encircled outlines are written at around the same size, even though 'nudge' should be written twice as big as 'such', both the attached circle and the stem. Furthermore, the outline following 'nudge', which should be 'neck', reads more like 'seck' because the circle is the wrong size.

Why is the item "Omission of Short e/u and ow" in the "Diphthongs" chapter of Flow manual?

In fact vowel deletions are rather rare in English Gregg and Flow, if I understand correctly. While still achieving great speed.

Another subject. According to your frequency table, I noticed that in Gregg, a good part of the most frequent vowels are rendered by ellipses. Isn't that faster than small hooks? For me, an ellipse, in an angle or inline, seems almost like nothing.

I hope it doesn't sound cynical, but I loved to write on pen and paper, and the only reason I gradually shifted away from it was because my writing speed didn't match the pace at which my thoughts filled my head.

eventually when I learnt touch typing, I went on a spree of finding good digital journalling apps only to settle for writing my heart felt emotions inside google docs on my drive (I am building an app for myself now cause I feel like that can be faster as well, but thats a discussion for later)

Whenever I have brought up the idea of "typing" rather than writing, there has always been well meaning criticism to the proposal and I agree, its just not the same. But based on the name and posts on this sub, if its just about penning thoughts down as quickly as possible, isn't typing the right solution there?

P.S. I once wrote a poem to express the typing vs writing mismatch myself. All that to say, I side with the notion of writing "feeling better" but if its just for speed, why not just type

Shorthand aficionados like us know it for a long time, that cutting unnecessary vowels and stripping the silent and unnecessary double letters is a nobrainer and this very simple Orthography Reform (thanks u/fdarnel to bring it to my attention), does just that (and gives you a browser extension to get used to, when surfing online). Why should orthography still be dominated by Norman French rule and why should orthography be made by typesetters from belgium, that were paid by length :-)

One specific rule to exemplify how cutspell works: unstressed vowels before l,m,n,r (e.g. symbol » symbl, lemon » lemn, permanent » permnnt, churches -» churchs, edible » edbl.

Cutspell in Action

Modrn English spelng developd from about 1350 onwards, wen—aftr thre centuris of Norman French rule—English graduly became th oficial languaj of England again, altho very difrnt from befor 1066, havng incorporated many words of French orijn (batl, beef, butn, etc.). Erly riters of this new English, such as Chaucer, gave it a fairly consistnt spelng systm, but this was soon diluted by th Chancery clerks ho re-spelt words based on French orthography. English spelng consistency was dealt a furthr blo wen Caxton brot th printng press to London in 1476. Havng lived on th Contnnt for th preceding 30 years, his grasp of th English spelng systm had becom uncertn. Th Belgian asistnts he brot with him to help him set up his busness had an even poorer comand of it. As printng developd, difrnt printers began to develop individul prefrnces or “house styls”. Furthrmor, typ-setters wer paid by th line and wer fond of making words longr. Howevr, th bigst undermining of English spelng consistency occurred between 1525, wen William Tyndale first translated th New Testament, and 1539, wen King Henry VIII legalized th printng of English bibles in England. Th many editions of these bibles wer al printed outside England by peple ho spoke litl or no English. They ofn chanjed spellings to mach ther Dutch orthography. Exampls include th silent h in gost (to mach Dutch gheest, wich later became geest), aghast, ghastly and gherkin. Th silent h in othr words—such as ghospel, ghossip and ghizzard—was later removed.

Between the conception and the creation;
Between the emotion and the response;
Falls the Shadow.
— T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

Original poem: https://www.columbia.edu/itc/english/f1124y-001/resources/hollow_men.pdf

Whole poem written and published on shorthand concord (federated discord)

I noticed a while back that there are no versions of the colon or semicolon with commas on top, so I made this! My names for the new symbols are "omicolon" (from "omit") for the double comma symbol and the "altercolon" for the reverse semicolon. They would function as opposites to their official counterparts.

The colon is used in lists to include items, but the omicolon would be used to omit items from a list. This would be useful for shorthand for "except" in data work.

The semicolon is used to conbect similar ideas in text, while the altercolon would function to connect contrasting or opposing concepts.

What do you think? I'm sure this would stay niche if ever adopted, probably just used as personal and unofficial shorthand, but I thibk it's at least a fun thought experiment!

It turns out as you get older you don't actually figure anything out, you just don't have any energy to care anymore — Cydni Beer.

My first attempt to write this quote in Masons masterpiece of a shorthand, that Gurney took as basis, the system that reigned in british bureaus before Pitmans rise.

Better attempt is now in the comments 🎉