SHORTHAND WRITING 



5360 



SHORTT 



all 



\- 



I- 



L 



IV 



r 



oo 



odd 



a " us 



oil 



The flexibility of the system briefly de- 

 scribed is largely due to the three positions in 

 which all characters may be written, with re- 

 j* J spect to vowel 



easineel I. i " at gounds> In the 



first position a 

 character is writ- 

 ten above the 

 line; if there be 

 characters in com- 

 pu bination the first 



h\ v one is placed 



o " oak I I tat ,11- p 



above the line of 



writing, the oth- 

 ers falling in their 

 I .. jn U ow owl natural relative 

 positions. In the 



I' ell IA n " use second position 



PITMANIC VOWELS characters are 



The upright lines are placed placed on the 



only to show locations of the i- .1 .1 i 



vowel characters in first, seo lme m tne tmrd 



ond and third positions. below or through 



the line. Another feature which provides added 

 flexibility is that all strokes are made both 

 light and shaded. 



Gregg Shorthand. Of the non-Pitmanic short- 

 hand systems the Gregg has probably met with 

 greater success than all its competitors outside 

 the Pitmanic group. The Gregg is a radical 

 departure from everything that had preceded 

 it. The claim is made that it can be learned 

 in one-half the time a Pitmanic syste\n re- 

 quires. It is a light-line system, there being no 

 shaded characters; two or three or five posi- 

 tions for writing the characters, which charac- 

 terize other systems, are unknown, for all 

 writing is on one line; vowels and consonants 

 are joined, and follow each other in their nat- 

 ural order. Gregg writers are taught many 

 contractions, but they are not obliged to learn 

 as many word-signs as are presented in the Pit- 

 manic systems. 



Written forward: 



KG RLNM TDTH 



Written downward: 



P B^ F V CH J S SH 



/ 



NG NK 



It has been shown that the Pitmanic char- 

 acters are based on straight lines and the parts 

 of a circle; the Gregg characters are straight 

 lines and parts of elliptical figures. The illus- 



tration in the preceding column gives the con- 

 sonant representations. 



The vowels are presented in groups, arranged 

 conveniently by their sounds : 



The following are the dipthongs used: 



Composed 

 of 



u f-oo 

 ow a-ob 



as in unit 

 " " owl 



Composed 

 of 



oi aw-e as in oil 

 i d-'e " " isle 



The promoters of the Gregg system claim 

 that a million people have adopted it for daily 

 use. Figures are not available for any of the 

 Pitmanic systems, except that it is stated that 

 ninety per cent of the court reporters of the 

 United States employ either the Graham or 

 the Benn Pitman phonography. 



Historical. Shorthand was an ancient art, 

 but was apparently almost lost to the world 

 during more than seven centuries. In the first 

 century B. c. Marcus Tullius Tiro, secretary to 

 the great Cicero, invented a crude shorthand 

 system, and called it brief writing. Others en- 

 larged upon his invention, and in the fifth cen- 

 tury the system contained 13,000 characters. 

 In the eighth century, for reasons unknown, the 

 art disappeared; in the year 1500 there were 

 found notes in the old Roman brief writing 

 of about the year 800. 



The beginnings of modem shorthand date 

 from 1588, when Timothy Bright prepared a 

 list of several hundred words with abbrevia- 

 tions. It was not at all practical, but inspired 

 others to similar efforts. The best production 

 of the seventeenth century was by William 

 Mason, who named his textbook A Pen 

 Plucked from the Eagle's Wing. Following 

 him were over a dozen Englishmen, who pro- 

 duced more or less elaborate brief-writing sys- 

 tems, but not any of them interested great' 

 numbers of people. Not until Isaac Pitman 

 published his Stenographic Sound Hand in 1837 

 and his System of Phonography in 1840 did 

 shorthand writing command the attention of 

 the entire world. E.D.F. 



SHORTT, ADAM (1859- ), a Canadian 

 economist and educator, after 1908 a member 



