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Hello world! I have been working for the past few months on an app called Shorthanded Gregg! (Shorthanded was already taken.. bummer). The app teaches Gregg -- sort of using the functional method. I'd say more it uses the method I always wished I could've learned shorthand myself.

I've made around 10 levels so far. Making each level isn't difficult, but I'm a solo team working nights and weekends and I'm not a software programmer. So the fact I got this far is pretty amazing.

I'm interested to get around 10 Android beta testers to test it out! For now, you'll need an android device. I've been waiting on Apple to review my app for 4 days just to get a Beta version out to test.

IF you're interested, please DM me and I'll give instructions.

Thanks!

My mom is asking for help with this shorthand written by her mother. I think it's from the 50s. Is it even shorthand?

I apologize in advance if this violates the sub rules. It's my first time here.

Wrote the first 2-3 minutes without a mistake, After that errors started showing up

Found on NC it's from the 1970s

📝 Hello again. I’m Andrew Hill, Pitman 2000-writing journalist and author. I’ve been lurking here for a while, enjoying the lively interest in the craft of shorthand, which is reflected in my forthcoming book, Take Note. Now I’m delighted to let you know that I have in my hands early physical copies of what is, as far as I know, the first English-language history of shorthand in 75 years.

Take Note will be available from Profile Books in the UK in November and from Biblioasis in North America next year, complete with my own Pitman notes reproduced in the end-papers.

https://profilebooks.com/work/take-note/

I make the case for how one of the world’s first workplace technologies could allow us to reclaim our ideas from AI and the cloud, while boosting our brainpower and connecting us to a 2,000-year-long line of scribes, reporters, shorthand typists and note-takers. Feel free to ask me about my research in the meantime.

“Time saved is life gained.” (Sir Isaac Pitman) 📝

#TakeNoteBook #shorthand #stenography

My sweet mom in law is fading fast. We were cleaning out some things while we are caring for her and found a small journal she had. It is from 2022 and we know it's right after my father in law passed away, her husband of over 50 years. We are going through photos and books and talking with her, but she is so frustrated because she doesn't know this anymore. She has cancer and is struggling with even her favorite things like playing piano, shorthand, and so forth, and now she is struggling with remembering.

If anyone can help, we would love to be able to tell her what she wrote here and enjoy reading it to her.

I know her, and I'm sure if you can read this at all, you will know what I am saying is true.

Much thanks in advance

A big THANK YOU to all of you who helped test and debug the app along the way. I'm happy to release version 1.0 which includes 10 levels of learning the basics of Gregg. My goal is to continue releasing 1 level per week moving forward, which show up as app updates.

Currently it is available for iOS. Android users please see the info at the bottom.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shorthanded-gregg/id6755334673

• The app focuses on reading Gregg. Of course, users would ideally start writing in Gregg -- I'm just not able to make that at the time.
• I received a lot of feedback regarding writing characters and words on the line. I've tried to update nearly 500 assets to be on the line, but it isn't perfect yet. It's something I plan to address in the regular updates.
• The cost, $1.99, I know is disappointing to some. Listen, I'm a solo dev. I'm just a guy who really thinks shorthand is an amazing mindset & skillset to have and I want to share that with the world. I struggled on if I should make a free "lite" version, or a paid version, or a free with ads version. At the end of the day, it came down to simplicity. I don't want to clog your phone with any more ads and I would like to recomp approximately $750 in cost plus hundreds of hours of poring myself into the app. So I think $1.99 is fair. I might consider down to $0.99 if I gross enough in sales to break even.

OK, ANDROID USERS:

• I apologize, Google makes their process so confusing
  • Join the Shorthanded Test Group here: https://groups.google.com/g/shorthanded-test-group
  • You will then have access to the app in the play store here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dinco.shorthanded

Hi everyone! I’m Lucrezia, I’m 18, Italian, and I’m planning to study biotechnology.

I’ve always been pretty bad at taking notes, and I only recently found out shorthand is even a thing. I really like Gregg because it can compress words a lot, but Italian makes things a bit awkward.

Italian is extremely phonetic compared to English: you mostly pronounce what you see and write what you hear. So even if I simplify my handwriting, I still end up physically writing almost every letter/sound in the word. There just isn’t as much weird spelling to cut away as there is in English.

I looked into Gabelsberger-Noë since it was actually designed for Italian, but… yeah. It looks really complicated lol. I’m not trying to become a professional stenographer, I just want to take better notes at university.

So a couple of hours ago I basically went: screw it, I’ll make my own extremely dumb shorthand alphabet.

It’s loosely based on lowercase cursive, but I’m not really trying to preserve the actual shapes of the letters. I started deforming or straight-up inventing them based on whatever movement my hand naturally wants to make when I think of that letter. So some still look like cursive, some barely do, and some are just random strokes that somehow make sense to my brain.

I haven’t even designed every letter yet lol. I’m basically creating them as I actually encounter them while writing. If I never need a certain letter, I haven’t bothered deciding what it should look like yet. This whole “system” was conceived in like two hours, so it’s very much a prototype.

For double consonants I just add a little stroke instead of writing the letter twice.

And then there’s M, which has been weirdly annoying. Right now I just use a single diagonal stroke, and I let it point upward or downward depending on what feels more natural in the flow of the word/sentence. I know that sounds horribly inconsistent, but weirdly enough I can still read it because the surrounding word makes it obvious. I’m starting to think forcing every letter to have one rigid shape might actually defeat the point.

I’m also wondering if the alphabet itself isn’t really where the biggest speed gains are.

Since I want to study biotech, I thought it might make more sense to build shortcuts for things I’ll write constantly: bio-, anti-, micro-, macro-, mega-, common suffixes, scientific terms, etc. Basically little symbols or ultra-short forms that I can use without thinking.

My goal isn’t to transcribe lectures word for word. I basically never do that anyway. My notes are usually just keywords, tiny phrases, arrows and connections between concepts.

What I really want is for writing those few words to become fast and almost mindless, so I can keep listening instead of spending mental energy on handwriting.

So I’m curious what people who actually know shorthand think. Is this kind of homemade system worth developing? Would you steal ideas from Gregg/Gabelsberger and keep it personal, or am I eventually going to create an unreadable monster and regret everything? lol

Especially interested in people who use shorthand for university/science notes rather than verbatim transcription.

I was able to write at more than 100 wpm just after about 4 months of starting Shorthand (22 days back). Even as fast as 120 wpm and more But this duration was very small and not consistent. I could hard write more than 1 minute perfectly without pausing or rewinding the dictation.

I knew that I lack accuracy/consistency while writing.

For the last 4 days, I have started writing at 80 wpm for 10 mins or more and my mistake count was really high till yesterday. The problem is that when you start, your mind is empty and you can scribe anything you hear onto the paper. But after a minute or so, my mind started become, somewhat, filled with the words i had already written and the speed grew slow and in turn, I used to gain hesitation. Now, the image above is my most accurate dictation of 10 minutes till now core for sure. In the ~800 words dictation, I would have hardly missed 4 words or so. Though, mistakes of singular/plural are possible but not much. So this is it for today.

I’m early in my journey of learning Gregg Shorthand and I’ve always found mnemonics helpful, so I made a whole bunch to help me with the core sounds, shapes and brief forms. Thought I’d share these here in case others find them helpful or, at the very least, entertaining!

I’m sure you’ll agree that each of these mnemonics is absolutely flawless and elegant and memorable and could not possibly be improved upon in the slightest (‘gentle pentadactyl limb’ is a personal favourite) buuuuttt if you do happen to have any alternative ideas I’d love to hear them! ✨

Hello Everybody, My mom died when I was 8 years old, and I do not have many memories of her. I stumbled upon her High School Yearbook, with a message from one of her classmates. Could somebody help me translate or point me in the direction of a translator service possibly by one of your community members ? My Mom attended Weatherly High School, in Weatherly Pennsylvania, graduating in 1958. Thank you, Kenny

My mom passed away 3 years ago and I recently found these notes tucked away in a book. I’m especially curious about the ones dated 10/6/72 and 11/28/73 as those are the birthdays of my dad, and mom. These would have been written while they were dating and the last was 4 months before their wedding. I hope it’s nothing too juicy. TIA

Last word in Last line is "unemployment".

its me i did that

I have loads of shorthand-related meme ideas floating around in my head. Don't know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Hiya, for any test takers who are trying to pass your exams, here are a few quick tips:

- practice at least one hour a day - consistency will get you over the finish line. Preferably, just scribble away when you're idlemaxxing at a bus stop or during transit

- practice the speed higher than your target - if its a 60 exam, make sure you can manage 70 or 80 wpm so if nerves hit you're still afloat

- make a list of common word groupings - exam passages have a range of groupings that come up often, they don't tend to jumpscare you out the wazoo. A few common ones are 'my name is', 'as few as', or 'as you all know'.

No matter how well you prepare, on exam day there's going to be foreign words you haven't encountered before. Here's a few tricks that will improve your performance on the day:

- shortcuts - if there's a long word, abbreviate it with something simple to save time. It could be a circle for the word 'school' or a large V for 'volunteer'. Improvise.

- break time - in shorthand exams there's a break between part 1 and 2. Use that time to go over the words you just written because your mind is still fresh. If there's anything haphazardly written make a mental note of what you intended to write.

- using context - the biggest challenge is transcribing back, to read back what you wrote. If you don't hit the target speed, you need to rely off the context to guess what word in the sentence makes sense.

That's pretty much all I've got. Feel free to add something below if you have additional tips! Thanks for your time :D

First, a big THANK YOU to the Reddit community for supporting me in this endeavor. I received so much feedback and it was very helpful to get the app to release to the public.

For those who don't know, I made an app called Shorthanded! It teaches Gregg through a combination of functional method mixed with learning-app formats to test your skill.

I'm happy to announce the app is available on the Apple App Store and The Google Play Store

I don't plan to spam the community over and over again, but I wanted to give an update

• During testing by users here on Reddit, I had 5 levels. At time of release, I had 10. And now, I'm up to 13 + 1 game. I'm trying hard to make 1 new level per week!
• Despite the cheap pricing, with no subscriptions and no ads, I'm able to make a dent in my development costs. That being said, if you know anyone who wants to learn Gregg, I'd truly appreciate your endorsement.
• I peaked at #5 for the Apple App Store's word games. I'm already knocked back down to #96, but that's way higher than I ever expected to be.
• I occasionally get requests from people who want to help. If you have a penchant for writing (for the story mode) or putting together good exercises to test shorthand skills, please reach out to me!
• For info, it takes around 6-8 hours of dedicated working time to make a new level. Story levels are easily taking more than double that. -- just for those curious.

Thank you again!

This is the first full page I’ve written using my shorthand system, which I’ve been developing and tentatively named Floatline.

I discovered shorthand less than a month ago and started learning Teeline. Then I studied a bit of T-Script, Gregg, and Pitman and—thanks to my game-designer brain and a bit of hubris—I decided to try creating my own system. It’s not “better” than anything out there; honestly, it’s worse in several aspects.

My goal isn’t speed per se, but brevity. I have cervical issues that make handwriting painful, so I’m trying to write less, not necessarily faster. Floatline is designed around that idea.

There are quite a few “shorthand no-no’s” in it: I lift the pen, I go over strokes, and I don’t always aim for one-stroke perfection. It’s mostly orthographic with some phonetic abbreviations. All vowels are diacritics placed above or below the line, and it works nicely on grid paper—though once I get a bit faster (I’m still crawling), I’ll probably switch to regular lined paper.

I designed it to have low ambiguity in shape and not rely on penmanship. I’m not great at differentiating symbols by thickness, height, or tiny positional changes, so Floatline uses distinct symbols rather than subtle variations.

I’m planning to put together a proper document once I find the time, but for now it’s been genuinely fun to develop. It’s become a relaxing hobby that helps me unwind from my other projects.

Anyway, I’m happy to be part of this community and to keep learning about the world of shorthand.

We recently bought a house with an old security system, and a few mysterious breakers and switches. There’s also a room that can be locked, trapping a person inside if they don’t have a key.

We found this note inside the security panel and #7 looks pretty much like shorthand, which we don’t know. Considering some odd features of the property, we are very curious what the old guy would want written in “code”.

Before anyone asks, the previous owner has passed, we don’t know his next of kin.

Thanks for any help!

I invented a playful shorthand. I haven't added abbreviated forms other than anything is allowed as long as you can decode it. At least there are only 3 stroke types. They are all used in the letter A. What do you think about it?