Does Anyone Keep A Diary In Shorthand?

[gwyneddd]

Interesting remark about "running out of ink." One reason I went back to FPs was....I was running out of ink. We order BPs from suppliers and the ink from the manufacturers is about 1 inch per pen. Remember when BP refills were filled to near the top? Not any more. The tube is nearly empty upon arrival. I got TIRED of writing during a meeting and then having to toss the pen in the trash. I was paying about a buck and a quarter a piece for these. Or more if they were the fancy printed ones with our address and my picture on the barrel.

 

I have YET to run out of ink in my TWSBI, which is my usual note pen right now.

[DaveBj]

I think it's divided because the sentences are shorter in shorthand.

 

 

 

It's a speed thing. Write down one side of the page, then down the other side. The shorter the distance one has to move one's hand horizontally, the faster one is able to write. In addition, we were taught to use only one side of the paper going from front to back. When we got to the last page, flip the steno book over and write from back to front. I have a shorthand text that's printed that way, top bound with the lessons on the front side of the page, then flip the book over and the book continues on the back side of each page.

 

Thanks. That's my one new thing learned for the day. Now I can go to bed

 

 

Interesting remark about "running out of ink." One reason I went back to FPs was....I was running out of ink. We order BPs from suppliers and the ink from the manufacturers is about 1 inch per pen. Remember when BP refills were filled to near the top? Not any more. The tube is nearly empty upon arrival. I got TIRED of writing during a meeting and then having to toss the pen in the trash. I was paying about a buck and a quarter a piece for these. Or more if they were the fancy printed ones with our address and my picture on the barrel.

 

I have YET to run out of ink in my TWSBI, which is my usual note pen right now.

 

Can't beat a large piston-filler, or, even better, an eye-dropper

[SuperNib44]

I am on the cusp of learning shorthand. My grandmother (who is in her 90's) gave me her Gregg textbook, and I am waiting for a lull in my classes at high school so I can begin to learn shorthand. My Grandma says that it is easy to learn, and when I asked if I could learn it in a month she said I could . (I think it might take a bit longer to perfect). She told me that when she used it regularly she at church during the sermon she would conscientiously be taking shorthand in her mind. She still uses it once in a while to jot a note on her calender she doesn't want her family to read. I am excited to learn.

[gwyneddd]

I filled the TWSBI piston filler a month ago with Kon-Peki and I'm not running out any time soon.

 

This Gregg Book looks promising. I suppose there are also youtube videos. A suggestion is to take dictation from tv or radio and then re-transcribe it longhand or typing.

 

Can you imagine us weirdos who use FOUNTAIN pens and MESSY ink and...we already can write in cursive, which is going to be a deep dark mystery to the upcoming generation. Add in shorthand and we're gonna be "CodeTalkers" --or "CodeWriters."

 

"I dunno what it says, Brandon! It's kinda like, Japanese or Chinese?!" "Yeah, man, no one can break that code, Destiny! We're sunk!"

[legume]

I wish I knew it. It would help in my more intensive lectures, but I'm keeping up pretty well as it is.

 

I doubt I'd use it for journaling, since I don't keep a journal. But sometimes when I'm working on a story my thoughts run faster than my hands can keep up and I may lose an idea. I've thought about getting a speech to text software for that.

 

I did look up shorthand alphabets before, but I never sat down to learn it.

[yukd]

On how long it took to learn: I just picked it up last year. It took me about a week to learn it and about a month of using it and transcribing it to get moderately proficient at it. Now, I can just do it almost without thinking about it.

 

The main thing in learning it is to just to be patient and keep doing it (writing shorthand and transcribing it back) and eventually it'll become second nature. If you take those lessons in the link mentioned above it's basically the same thing you'll learn in any book or class except it's here online for free and you can do it at your leisure. So, if you're interested just try it out and keep doing it, it's really not that hard.

 

I do admit that I've been using the entire line all the way across when I write shorthand in a steno notebook and then intermittently sloppily practicing spencerian roundhand in between notes (mainly to, as mentioned, practice spencerian and also secondarily to cycle through all my inked pens each day). That does make more sense for speed to only use half the page to the middle line when doing shorthand, but for general note taking and journal writing it hasn't really cramped my style so to speak to barrel on past it.

 

In terms of the joy of writing longhand (where if you use a journal you prefer to go longhand than shorthand) I guess that I place less emphasis on the act of writing script in a steno pad and more on just using the steno pads as a place to temporarily write anything down while away from the computer. I mean, the steno pads are cheap and you're not going to sit there and admire them twenty years from now and say what a good boy am I while leafing through them, haha! I kind of like that they're cheap and so there's no pressure to make it look pretty per se. It's more of just a recording tool (steno pads to me that is) than a thing to put on a pedestal with pretty script and profound sayings etc. Although sometimes I might come up with a gem or two and jot them down to be transcribed later for posterity; and also sometimes my pedestrian spencerian might resemble something worth admiring, but again, cheap paper, throw away steno pad, it's all just ultimately utilitarian for me realistically speaking.

[fiberdrunk]

I do keep a journal in shorthand, or at least, I've recently begun to keep one in shorthand this year. I took Gregg shorthand in high school in the 80's, but never used it again until recently. I decided to take it up again and teach it in our homeschool as a note-taking tool. I'm really enjoying it and wish I'd kept it up after high school, but hey, at least I'm getting back into it now. I guess the more I plunge down the technological rabbit hole, the more a part of me wants to hold back and do a few things the old-fashioned way.

 

As for how long it takes to learn shorthand, I'm teaching Gregg Notehand to my son currently (Notehand is a scaled-down form of Gregg shorthand, with fewer brief forms to memorize.. it's meant for note-taking rather than verbatim dictation, which the other editions of Gregg shorthand teach) . There are 70 lessons in the book. It's meant to be taught 5 days a week, so I figure that it will take almost 4 months. However, the basic shorthand alphabet is all taught by lesson 38-- after that, they just teach additional ways to abbreviate words. So by lesson 38, you can pretty much spell out any word in full... so, say within 8 weeks. Of course, this depends on how much you practice. Every spare moment I have, I'm constantly reading or writing shorthand-- at the doctor's, in the car, everywhere I can squeeze it in while I'm waiting.

 

I prefer to use a fountain pen for shorthand, and even scored one of the old Sheaffer Gregg Writers, which I love. I also like the cheap Jinhao 599. It's very light-weight and has a fairly fine nib, which is great for shorthand. I love the Charlie pen, too, that came with the Noodler's Heart of Darkness ink recently... it probably has the finest nib of all the pens I own. Finer is better for shorthand. My son likes the Pilot G2 gel pens for shorthand. Those are nice, too.

 

One drawback to keeping a journal (or anything else) in shorthand is the possibility that your descendants will not be able to read it. A friend of mine has a bunch of photos from her mother that are labelled in shorthand-- and no one can read them. So, it's something to keep in mind.

Edited July 19, 2015 by fiberdrunk

[Bklyn]

 

 

Also, I'm a little vain about my handwriting, so I prefer to write in longhand.

That is too funny!

[Bklyn]

I actually do use gregg shorthand for journal/note taking. I break out one of those cheap gregg ruled notebooks that you can find in Target or Office Depot etc., and just go at it! It's less stressful on my hand (the tendons and ligaments etc.) than taking notes longhand, I think mainly because you can do gregg shorthand with little pressure on the pen (either gripping it or pressing the nib against the paper) while doing it.

 

It does save paper in the sense that you can write the same sentence with less pen strokes and much less space than if you wrote it out longhand or in cursive; and it's also faster to write in shorthand than longhand but for it to be useful you then have to transcribe it (like into the computer) from shorthand back to typed out words; so in using shorthand in this manner (note taking and then transcribing later) it allows you to practice both the writing of shorthand and the reading of it also.

 

Ball point pens or rollerballs or pencils are fine for writing shorthand because their points are usually pretty thin. If you're going to use a fountain pen to do it, it's easier to use a fine nibbed pen (as opposed to a broad) because its easier to make smaller strokes with a finer or smaller nib tip. I've done gregg shorthand with broad tips but sometimes it'll "blob" out the details and realistically speaking legibility is more important than nib width if you're writing down something that you're going to have to read back later. So, generally speaking the best nibs to do gregg shorthand are just normal (that is, unmodified) fines or thinner.

 

If you're interested in learning how to read or write gregg shorthand for free, check out this website (they have lessons you can take just simply by reading them and then practicing on your own)...:

 

http://gregg.angelfishy.net/

This is too cool!!!!!

[Bklyn]

 

It's a speed thing. Write down one side of the page, then down the other side. The shorter the distance one has to move one's hand horizontally, the faster one is able to write. In addition, we were taught to use only one side of the paper going from front to back. When we got to the last page, flip the steno book over and write from back to front. I have a shorthand text that's printed that way, top bound with the lessons on the front side of the page, then flip the book over and the book continues on the back side of each page.

This is great stuff.

[Bklyn]

I took shorthand in high school, recommended to help take college notes. I got up to about two hundred words per minute. Later on I studied machine shorthand and worked up to about three hundred words per minute, but it was like hitting a wall, and I couldn't build up to the higher speeds required of court reporters. Then I gave all that up to spend my career in computers, which I really liked. The high school teacher of shorthand had us use pencils and ballpoint, because she thought they were faster than fountain pens. I think she was correct. Less likely to run out of ink also. I knew a couple of court reporters who used shorthand instead of the shorthand machine. They were awesome. They didn't use fountain pens. In court or in a deposition you couldn't afford to risk running out of ink. Yeah, I know that they could have used a case of forty fountain pens, but they were not pen junkies.

300 words per minute is almost hard to imagine. I am not sure if I read that fast.

 

I used to know a women who would take dictation in shorthand. I LOVED to watch her just sit there and take cryptic notes without breaking a sweat.

[Bklyn]

 

 

 

Thanks. That's my one new thing learned for the day. Now I can go to bed

 

 

 

Can't beat a large piston-filler, or, even better, an eye-dropper

I LOVE eye droppers.

[Bklyn]

I filled the TWSBI piston filler a month ago with Kon-Peki and I'm not running out any time soon.

 

This Gregg Book looks promising. I suppose there are also youtube videos. A suggestion is to take dictation from tv or radio and then re-transcribe it longhand or typing.

 

Can you imagine us weirdos who use FOUNTAIN pens and MESSY ink and...we already can write in cursive, which is going to be a deep dark mystery to the upcoming generation. Add in shorthand and we're gonna be "CodeTalkers" --or "CodeWriters."

 

"I dunno what it says, Brandon! It's kinda like, Japanese or Chinese?!" "Yeah, man, no one can break that code, Destiny! We're sunk!"

I love TWSBI. I have one that is about 3 months old. (A 580 with oxblood ink)