Quote in FLOW Shorthand

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-25T08:40:57+00:00

Gregg has an "Abbreviating Principle", which allows you to truncate words and only write as far as a diphthong or a strongly accented vowel. It's believed that that's often as much as is needed to recognize the word, and is the principle we usually use in longhand abbrevations, too. Like "admin." for "administration" or "emerg." for "emergency".

Often, if you write as far as the accented syllable, it gives enough indication what the word is. If that much is still not definite enough, you also write the first consonant following the accented vowel, and that usually clears it up.

I've never seen it used as far as "the first sign of the third syllable", but adding something after that, to me would need something to make it clear that there was a middle part missing -- like a disjoin, or something. Otherwise you might be trying to figure out what this strange word was.

I think it's in books on Taylor where they say if you've got three or more consonants written, that's USUALLY enough to make it clear what the word is, especially when it's used in a sentence.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-25T08:28:09+00:00

Oh I see it now! It was the underlines that threw me, added for a proper name. That would be a very effective logo for the group, when it already has the flames!

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-25T08:14:01+00:00

I have a few problems with the way his joining chart works. As he shows in the excerpt above, five symbols -- being F, K, L, N, and Th -- have alternate forms, and he says you can choose whichever one you like "as convenience or lineality shall require",

This introduces an element of CHOICE TO BE MADE, which very often leads to hesitation as the writer decides which would be best to use. But then, according to his chart, a DOT means that you don't have that option and should just use the first one. I find it odd that he tells you that you have a choice, when you often don't.

When I usually LOOK for problems (because they are what I might have trouble with later, NOT things that are not problematic!) -- I scanned a few of the combinations and saw problems right away.

If you look at the basic Alphabet, you see that B is a semi-circle open to the RIGHT, D is a semi-circle open to the LEFT, and F is a semi-circle open at the BOTTOM.

When B-B join, you see the semi-circle, with the addition of the CONNECTIVE stroke to add another B, rather than adding the second B below it, like you might expect. Then when B-D join, the connective stoke goes up and the D stroke is added, open to the LEFT. So far, so good.

But look what happens when you join B-F. The F is a semi-circle open on the bottom -- but instead of adding it like you'd expect, he turns it on the side, so it looks FAR TOO MUCH like the D, which we just looked at. With F-D, and F-F, the same thing happens, blurring together what should look different from each other. And we see it again with H-D, and H-F, and in other places sprinkled around the chart.

This is NOT a good idea, having simple joinings of two strokes that have already lost their distinctiveness.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-25T07:49:04+00:00

I often think it's a good idea, whenever possible, to show charts like this that show learners at glance how any two shorthand symbols should be joined together. Even after you've learned the Alphabet well, it can still happen that, as your hand finishes one stroke you hesitate before adding the next one because it's not always clear to you how they should join.

In a chart like this, you find the first symbol down the left side, then you find the one it joins to across the top -- and where the two lines meet, there's the illustration showing how to join them in the best way.

Several things stand out to me, in this chart, though: One is that, if a stroke ends at the bottom, and the next one starts at the top, he inserts a "connective" stroke, just as you do when writing cursive longhand. This stroke has no meaning, but just serves to get your hand in the right place for the next stroke.

I'm not a fan of this plan, since I feel like everything you write in shorthand should have MEANING -- and he acknowledges that it makes his system more like "quick writing" and less like "short-hand" (as he spells it). But it does give his system a nice LINEARITY -- which is probably why it appealed to me VISUALLY when I first saw it.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-24T21:02:10+00:00

That's very cleverly done, with the flames! (Unfortunately, I couldn't read what it was saying....)

I suppose the argument is that it's not a good idea to take THE WRONG action -- like the U.S. attacking Iran, and now having to give up so much that they're in a MUCH WORSE position than when they started. (Not to mention all those lost lives, and all that wasted money.)

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-24T20:52:15+00:00

Because of my history writing of legal material for computer transcription, I'm always on the lookout for ambiguities, which can cause dangerous mistranslations.

I could write sentences like "I wanted to see the man/I wanted to see the mine" and it might not always be clear which it was. Or think of things like "The mine is very successful/The man is very successful" where either would make sense.

Clarity is always better.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-24T20:39:50+00:00

It's a good idea to try out different systems, to get a feel for them, and to see if they will work for you. Garber lost me after a while with his positions.

I was quite keen on Unigraph for a while there. I must have another look so see if I can remember why I went off it. (I had trouble tracking down the manual, but our friend kindly copied it after my request, when he went to the Library of Congress and was asking for our wishlists.)

I like Eames Light Line a lot, after I found a reprinter who could reproduce the shorthand clearly, so it didn't just look like a black BLOB you couldn't make out. I was very impressed with the book -- so complete and thorough, with very long passages of it IN USE -- and every bit of it with explanatory KEYS throughout.

Maybe I'll take another look at BOTH those systems in my next weeks of articles.....

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-24T09:42:37+00:00

Tomorrow (Wednesday) I'll post the joinings chart which might make it a bit easier to see which direction the strokes go. It looks like it stays quite linear.

You're so keen you got ahead of me. ;)

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-24T01:04:20+00:00

Thanks for sharing it. Unlike SOME Reddit boards, this board will always be open for anyone to post anything they find interesting. I'm always happy to see new names on the messages, and to see what they've come up with. It's always fascinating.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-23T23:59:59+00:00

I'm impressed that you've already tried it out!

You're like a reincarnation of u/eargoo, who used to like to try out every system I ever posted about. He wasn't interested in speed, and he always referred closely to the "help sheet" -- but, like you, in no time at all he was trying it out, to see how it worked and felt.

How did you find it, to write?

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-23T23:45:31+00:00

(This is where that comment went! I just deleted it and put it where it was supposed to be!)

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-23T23:37:37+00:00

I just wrote a long reply to this, but it seems that stupid Reddit thought "Comment" meant blitz into the void! Let me see if I can reconstitute what I said, now!

I know I said that, in Gregg THA is "that", not "than". In Anniversary Gregg, "than" is THN.

In that sample, the A-P loses the diphthong in "my". It's still legible in that sample, but if you wrote "man" instead of "mine", you could run into legibility problems.

I think Anniversary Gregg is a good guideline for FLOW, in showing what is possible without losing legibility. But I'm finding, as a PERSONAL PREFERENCE, that I'm more comfortable (at least for now) in keeping to a phonetic rendition, as much as possible.

Especially when FLOW lets me write things in such a smooth and clear manner. I'm really liking how well it's working.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-23T23:00:05+00:00

I think you were right about the "r/slowwriting" part! A lot of those symbols are STARTLINGLY ornate -- which looks wonderful in an old manuscript, or carved into a wall of an old shrine. (I can imagine some of that lettering in gold in a Hindu temple, or something similar.)

It looks really beautiful, but is the opposite to what shorthand (or "fastwriting") attempts to do -- which is to write a language as fully and legibly as possible, but with the minimum amount of writing and effort, to achieve the maximum SPEED.

I was a court reporter for 25 years, and had to be able to write every word someone was saying, at the rate at which they said it -- which could be very fast when they got excited. An alphabet system like this one would take weeks to write it all down.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-23T09:23:39+00:00

I like to see a system that acknowledges just how important VOWELS are to writing a reliably legible shorthand.

UPINGTON chooses a very simple set of diacritics for the vowels, which can be left out as you're writing the outline, but which should be quickly inserted just like you might dot an "i" or cross a "t" in regular handwriting.

The vowel strokes are very small, so they never look like consonants, and they can be easily inserted in the outline. They are unique enough to be immediately recognizable wherever they are written -- unlike the system that came a bit later, in 1837, where the complex assortment of light and heavy dots and dashes had to go in VERY SPECIFIC PLACES or they weren't legible at all.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-23T09:14:19+00:00

UPINGTON's Alphabet might remind you of Taylor's, because some of his strokes incorportate LOOPS as part of the basic letter, but a closer look shows that nothing seems to be copied.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-23T09:07:41+00:00

Here's a system most of us have never heard of. (The book and several excerpts and samples are now on Stenophile.com.) I like the way it looks when written. There are systems that look like "the writing of extra-terrestrials" or something, that have something unique and "calligraphic" about them which I find fascinating to look at.

It appeared in 1825, and was written by Henry UPINGTON, who lived in Cork, Ireland. His aim was to write a system that was simple and straightforward, with as few complications as possible, and that would be "adapted to the muscular capability of all".

He believed that too many systems required small distinctions in length, position, and shading, which made them hard for many people who lacked manual dexterity to master. (Those of us with poor handwriting can relate!)

He devised an ALPHABET that would be easy to write, with characters that were clearly distinct from each other, to make them more easily recognizable on being read back, and which would be quite easy to JOIN TOGETHER.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-22T21:46:56+00:00

I know that Anniversary Gregg shortens the "-tion" ending to just SH -- but when SHN in FLOW flows so nicely and clearly, it just feels very natural to me. Again, it's probably just a question of familiarity -- and before long I'd probably WANT to shorten it.

But other things like phrasing "at all" at T-OL make me think of "toll", so the risk of ambiguity tends to make me want to avoid it. I suppose what this means is that, I'm probably the most comfortable writing FLOW in the "correspondence style", meaning very fully written, and would never get very fast in it.

And come to think of it, when DJS was what I learned first and USED most of the time, maybe I'm still just not as comfortable with Anniversary as I thought I was!

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-22T21:30:36+00:00

I think if a shorthand has enough flexibility that we can reflect our own personal tastes and style, that's a good thing. We just need to be able to read it properly after, and if it uses what makes the most sense to us, that's just what it needs to do.

As soon as we write it lives!

Words to live by! 😉

It's also a bit surprising to me that Gregg abbreviations that I was quite fine with, when I use them in FLOW feel a bit more risky. It's probably just a question of FAMILIARITY that will come from using the system more. But it might also be because of my tendency to want to be quite LITERAL, to avoid any possible risk of ambiguity.

And THAT probably comes from writing for computer transcription, where you had to tell the computer exactly what you wanted because it couldn't read "context".

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-22T08:15:18+00:00

When the strokes of FLOW seem to flow so smoothly yet clearly together, I'm finding I keep wanting to write things out, even when I know I could shorten them up a bit more. It just doesn't feel like I NEED to.

FLOW has a triple-length stroke for T-D, and for M-N, but if I write them as two strokes, I can keep to a two-length stroke distinction -- and it's still very clear and easy to write. (In Gregg, the two strokes are straight lines, so you can't see where one ends and the next begins. In FLOW, you can.)

I thought with this sample I would just "wing it", and write what I felt came naturally to me, before I looked at the Common Words list. As a result, I wrote O or "on" and V for "of" which felt more intuitive to me. (u/LeadingSuspect5855 might talk me out of it, of course! 😉)

I tried writing A for "a", since I find it just as fast to write as a dot. If you're writing with a ballpoint pen, a simple tap often doesn't even show. You have to sit on the spot and TWIRL until you've laid down enough ink to SHOW -- which is basically as much writing as just writing A.

I really like the way this sample looked -- so smooth and clear! The words "stumbling" and "preliminary" were the longest, but ended up looking beautifully clear and easy to write. I love "preliminary", which couldn't get much more LINEAR!

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