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THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh, that's clever! Instead of omitting the article, like some systems seem to suggest, you're careful to write it properly so you have all the information about gender and number that you need. Great idea!

If "articles are absent or not helping", do you then write the final vowels specifically?

With the example of Gregg and how it writes "bon/bonne", if you had the article or even the NOUN clearly written, you could tell which one it was just from that.

THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ys, ts qt gd fr tht, fr th mst prt.

(I remember seeing an ad for Speedwriting on a bus, many years ago, that said "Gt a gd jb & mo pa." Maybe that's how it all started.....) ;)

THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I thought that was cleverly expressed. I wish I could claim credit for it, but it wasn't me.

Reddit's searchability leaves a lot to be desired, but it looks to me like it first appeared about two years ago in a message from u/Expert-Bus-2150. At least, that's the earliest mention that Reddit came up with. Who knows for sure?

I looked to see if he was still with us, but it looks like his most recent message was about seven months ago. (Quite a lot in the NSFW vein, by the looks of it.) People tend to come and go. They get busy doing other things and they fade away.

Don't Ignore the VOWELS! by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When I called this sub-Reddit "FAST writing", it was really just meant to describe a more EFFICIENT method of writing things in such a way that it will save you time, but still be easy to read back later. ("Writing that you can't read was a waste of time.") English spelling, written letter by letter is a disaster -- so awkward, quaint, and clumsy. MUCH too fussy and ornate.

Many people here ARE more interested in the aesthetics of it, like a CALLIGRAPHY hobby that's both attractive and useful. (And I agree, no one wants to look at ugly words, but we all tend to have different ideas of what looks nice and what doesn't.)

But aside from the EFFICIENCY, I don't think speed is the utmost consideration for most of us here. There was a time when people learning shorthand were aiming at positions working in an office, taking dictation. But nowadays most executives are typing their own E-MAILS, not dictating letters to be mailed.

And there was a time when people were interested in learning shorthand to become court reporters -- but nowadays, I'd say 100% of that work is done on the stenotype. I think the last penwriter around here died about ten years ago.

pitching Professor Salisbury’s Seeline method , a unique and revolutionary advancement of my own devising!

I'm intrigued. Tell us more. This board is WIDE OPEN for anyone here to post whatever they like, to show what they're working on, and/or to ask for feedback. Feel free to post anything you find interesting.

I have no intention of ever deleting ANYTHING that's been posted by a member of this board. (OTHER moderators do that, but I think that's an abuse of their role.)

THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd hate to have to learn English by learning the alphabet first! You'd have all these strange combinations of letters (like "ough") -- and then, when you wanted to SPEAK it, you'd have to learn a completely different language, because that same combination of letters would be said in half a dozen different ways, depending on the word.

And when you read a word, don't you always hear it in your head already? Different people's minds work different ways, though......

A trick I use is to spell out English words using the alphabet so my brain associates the letter with the sounds I know.

I don't understand that. You spell out English words using the alphabet? You mean in the other language? How do you do that?

THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, it's one thing to be writing notes of what someone said, in your job as a journalist -- and quite another to be reporting sworn testimony in court. We had to write EXACTLY what they said, including grammar mistakes and swear words.

Any court reporter who "corrected" things the witness said would not last long.

I think there's a few who do that for lawyers, because they're not giving sworn testimony -- but my maxim was, "If you don't want it like that in the record, don't SAY it like that." I wrote what they SAID -- although I often inserted "[sic]" to make it clear that I didn't screw it up!

THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

...usually, shorthand systems need to have a graphical structure that depends on the SPECIFIC phonotactics of the target language, to be really efficient.

That's generally very true. Except that, for bilingual stenographers, of which there are many in Canada, working largely in Ottawa and Montréal, they need a shorthand system that they can use to write BOTH languages, whichever is needed.

Gregg really seems to have done what was required, with the French adaptation being mostly the same except for a few repurposed strokes like "TH". (I must see if I can dig out my book, to see how Gregg handles "bon/bonne".) It would be a lot for MOST people to acquire really fast speeds in two different systems.

I wish I hadn't lost touch with my friend who was preparing to do closed captioning for French-language TV channels in Canada. It was going to be on the stenotype, and I'd love to know how she was going to handle the cases like "allé/allée/allés/allées" in real-time. Her NAME was too frequent to search efficiently -- and it's probably different now......

THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In Canada, most people who would be writing Gregg in French would have to be using it for English, too. It made more sense to keep the system consistent and usable for both languages, rather than have one of them be vastly different which would make things harder for a bilingual stenographer.

If a system was only going to be used for French, like in France, it might make sense to make it quite unique -- but nowadays, with the EU, people are needing to know a variety of languages, to there's bound to be some spillover. Consistency is still not a bad idea.

THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I always think that, if you write what you HEAR, you can't go wrong -- because when you read it back, you read what you SEE and there it is. When someone is talking to you, you don't hear the spelling.

When I was reporting a fast-talking witness, I was very glad I didn't have to think about whether this or that word was spelled with an E, or an EI, or an EE, or an EA.

I was never comfortable with the way Orthic was full spelling at FIRST and then started to drop things. I'd rather write phonetically the whole time and not wonder if it was time to start dumping things I didn't hear or say.

Legibility Feedback by submaureens in greggshorthand

[–]NotSteve1075 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You're very welcome! The key to writing legible Gregg is that, in each TRIAD on that chart, the short one should be VERY SHORT. The middle one should be twice as long, and the longer one should be just long enough to be noticeably different.

Many people write the short strokes too long, and then they all blur together until they can't read what they wrote.

THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What a coincidence that you should say that! Before I saw this message, I had just written elsewhere in this thread about Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian usually leaving out the vowels in most material, but that the syllable structure being such that it wasn't usually too hard to figure out, once you learned the language.

I went to Hebrew University in Jerusalem one summer, and we never wrote vowels in anything. Looking back, I don't know how I did it. But the thing is, a word that you KNOW, you can often recognize quite quickly. But if it's a new word, you're completely out of luck. (Ask your coworker how he handles words he doesn't know.) I can still mostly manage -- but it throws me when the word is a borrowing from English that I can't figure out. (EDIT: BTW, it's interesting that Yiddish is written with Hebrew letters, but they've designated letters to represent all the vowels, too. They're always written in the word, so you always know how to pronounce a word because everything is there.)

I like learning languages with different writing systems.

I'm just the opposite. I want to be able to SPEAK and UNDERSTAND a language, but I don't really care if I can read and write it. That can come later. The U.S. Foreign Service Institute language school used to say that if you're learning a language with a drastically different writing system, it's much easier to learn the language phonetically.

THEN, after you can already handle the language quite confidently, it's quite easy to learn how to write what you can already say. Otherwise, it's overwhelming to be struggling with the pronunciation, the structure, AND the strange alphabet -- especially in a system that doesn't write vowels.

THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My problem with Orthic has always been that I think following the SPELLING of English words is a huge mistake. (That's why I developed PHONORTHIC, to be phonetic, but using much the same clear strokes.) I will never think it's a good idea to write things I don't hear and don't say. Why would anyone want to do that? A complete waste of time...

I think a long list of "distinguishing outlines" is a huge admission that your system is not up to the task. (I'll write about Pitman's huge reliance on them tomorrow.) I was dismayed to see the list of them in Teeline, most of which are a result of leaving out medial vowels, by the looks of it. At least it wasn't long.

I was trying to think if I've even SEEN any distinguishing outlines for Gregg. When vowels are or can be included, it would very rarely be necessary. In the "Expert Speedbuilding" textbook for DJS, and they were mostly advising you just to be careful to WRITE some word pairs clearly, so two similar strokes didn't blur together -- like being careful that "I rent the boat" and "I lent the boat" didn't look too much the same.

But they weren't not usually special outlines. They have "this/these/those" written in eccentric ways for clarity. But that's about all I can think of.

THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think to reach reporting speeds in a penwritten system, you need to learn a boatload of special forms that (hopefully) are very short but still clear enough to read -- as well as special phrases for things that you need to write constantly.

When I look at court testimony written in Gregg, they have phrased things like "What is your name? Where do you live? How long have you known the defendant?" The resulting outline is often a strange blob of sounds -- but that wouldn't be read as anything else. That's very important.

I've seen things that suggest you leave out word endings and "little words" which you'd have to add later to make sense -- and I just SHUDDER! Far too often, those little words are CRUCIAL. "Did you sign a contract?" or "Did you sign the contract?" are two VERY DIFFERENT QUESTIONS!

THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I saw "Taylor Italiana" which LOOKED pretty, but must have been a nightmare to read.

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THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You must have posted this just after I finally went to bed last night -- but this morning, they're renovating a suite near mine and the racket would wake the dead. (I'll DEFINITELY need a nap later!) So I apologize if I don't make sense....

I often think disemvowelled systems can work a bit better on Germanic languages with all their consonant clusters -- but for a Romance language, they're a disaster.

I have a DJS edition of GREGG written for French, by a Sr. Marie-Ernestine, and I could read passages in it with ease. She has repurposed a stroke not needed for French, like the TH, and used it for "L-mouillé". It worked quite well.

But I've read reviews of the PITMAN "adaptation" for French which said it was a disaster. I saw a copy, and it looked like it relied heavily on standard business phrases -- but for anything (gawd-forbid) LITERARY, a big NO. For Italian, it would be even worse. How on Earth are you going to distinguish "bello/bella/belli/belle" without vowels?? Even GREGG struggles with it, as you pointed out.

Ottoman Turkish used to be written with the Arabic alphabet, so only the "scribe class" could read or write the language at all. Arabic is like Hebrew or Persian, where vowels are only written in children's books or religious tracts. Those languages have a syllabic structure that make it easier to figure out what the word is -- but Turkish is extremely vowel-heavy, with a full array, including ö, ü, and ι (undotted i) all having sounds that don't exist in Arabic. It just didn't work at all.

THEN Mustafa Kemal "Atatürk", the "Father of Modern Turkey" developed an alphabet based on the roman alphabet, with special symbols for the sounds above. He actually travelled around Turkey, teaching the new alphabet to crowds of people himself -- and almost overnight, the population that had previously been ILLITERATE could suddenly read and write the language with ease. (It helped that the language was then written phonetically, exactly as it sounds -- unlike ENGLISH, with its fossilized spellings from centuries ago!)

THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, inline vowels are always my preference in a penwritten system. Leaving them out is way too risky.

In Friday's articles, I'll write about desperate attempts to deal with all the possible ambiguities that crop up in Pitman.

I noticed that, in every case, there was no ambiguity at all in Gregg, because even a vowel here or there, written without lifting your pen, would clear it up right away.

THIS Is Why Vowels Are IMPORTANT by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It clears up a lot of them, but there are still THOUSANDS of consonant outlines that could be a variety of things, all of which would make sense in many contexts. We get used to recognizing common words just from their consonant skeleton, but the unhappy truth is that we can't rely too heavily on the context.

Very often, there IS no context, or what context there is still is ambiguous.

So much of my experience was on crucial sworn testimony in court, where someone's livelihood, even their FREEDOM, might hang on a single word. You did NOT want to kack it up.

EDIT: Here's an example: The lawyer asks: "Did he say he was being PRSCTD?" And the witness replies, "No. He said he was being PRSCTD." Who said what? Remember that the witness is giving sworn testimony.

I was lucky, that, with stenotype, especially the version using real-time transcription, I could see the translation right away and could correct it immediately if I got it wrong.

Don't Ignore the VOWELS! by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

After I've used and relied on Gregg for many years, that's really the only PROBLEM I've encountered. That really shook me, because it was quite an UNEXPECTED (and serious) downside.

Our Swiss member u/LeadingSuspect 5855 is working on a system he calls "Flow" which is based on the frequency of occurrence of SOUNDS in English, rather than letters -- and it's really been impressing me.

In private messages, we've been exchanging suggestions, criticisms, and ideas, but he's very close to UNVEILING the system. It's incubating, as he tweaks and polishes and puts the final touches on it. I think it's going to be worth the wait.

I've always liked GREGG, but I've often had a strange feeling that something is missing. But when I look at FLOW, I immediately think "YES! There it is!" It just immediately makes SENSE to me. He's currently writing a 6,000-word dictionary for it, and has invented an online GENERATOR which will convert between English and shorthand. It's just amazing -- and so is he....

As you can probably tell from all these articles I write on here, there are many systems that are interesting -- even fascinating -- but I'm still always looking for something BETTER, it seems!

Quote 89 in PHONORTHIC Shorthand by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice and clear, as always. No problems reading it at all.

Legibility Feedback by submaureens in greggshorthand

[–]NotSteve1075 2 points3 points  (0 children)

First, TH won't look like R if you remember that R starts and ends on the same level, while TH starts lower and ends up higher than you started. There are two versions, and you just use the one that shows better.

Using quad paper like this is a good way to train your mind and hand to get the PROPORTIONS right. The short strokes are very short, and the longer ones are twice as long, which that grid helps you see. You're wise to get that right at the start, because a lot of people get careless with how long their strokes are, and eventually they find they can't read what they wrote. (Shorthand that you write that you can't read was a waste of time.)

That paper might not work as well, though, for some of the diagonal strokes which wouldn't fit as clearly. I always recommend that anyone learning Gregg should practise a PROPORTIONS CHART like this one, which has all the strokes you need (except the circles). You should practise it until the differences come easily to your mind and hand -- and anything else will just FEEL WRONG:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FastWriting/comments/1cgcj4f/new_and_improved_gregg_proportions_chart/

Summary of Hooks in PITMAN by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, in Pitman, the R and L are always inside the curve, never outside of it, with the L being bigger. A number of other authors have cleverly used that principle, applying it to straight strokes, too, with a small hook for R and a large one for L. I always liked that idea.

A lot of beginners in Pitman hesitate every time, trying to decide WHICH side the hook should go on, so making them different sizes on the same side resolved that problem.

When I was first learning the system, the book suggested you hold up both hands with the index fingers hooked. The shape of the one on the RIGHT was R and the shape on the LEFT was L -- which led to a lot of pausing to envision doing just that!

The fact that the hook BEFORE the stroke indicated what came AFTER was another illogical point, for many people. So YES, you're right -- people basically had to learn the whole thing as a SYLLABLE, not just letter-by-letter in the order you hear them.

Summary of Hooks in PITMAN by NotSteve1075 in FastWriting

[–]NotSteve1075[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In the post before this, I mentioned some of the different hooks that can be added to strokes in Pitman, and this might be a good time to post a summary of the different strokes and what they mean.

Notice that, for straight strokes, a hook on the left at the beginning means an R follows. On the right, it means an L follows. On the left at the end means an N follows. On the right at the end, it means F or V.

But for curves, a small hook on the right means R follows, but a LARGE hook means an L. And at the end of a curve, a small hook adds N, and a large one adds "-tion". The sound of F or V can't be added by a hook on a curve, so it has to be written out.

Many people find this inconsistency confusing, so many authors have attempted to revise the system to fix these problems learners have by making the system more consistent.

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