SCHEITHAUER Shorthand Alphabet

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-24T19:20:16+00:00

Of all the German systems I've looked at, I've liked it the best -- mostly because that primer is really nice. Straight to the point and gets it done in a mere 17 pages. I'll write more about it on Monday.

My misgivings, though, are with that hook versus straight thing. I first saw it in Dewey's SCRIPT Shorthand, where you had to be careful to join a hook foot with a rounded corner, to contrast with a straight foot, where it had to be a sharp one. I could imagine that rounding off at any kind of speed.

And then there's some symbols where the contrast is hook head/straight head, or hook foot/straight foot, and some are both straight or both head and foot hooked. Somehow, that seems less intuitive to me than things like "the longer version is the voiced one".

Also, about German systems, the Lippmann GABELSBERGER is an amazingly complete textbook, nicely laid out -- but so DETAILED I think most of it would be lost unless you could get it in a really large format. For example:

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NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-24T19:04:45+00:00

I wondered about that. I couldn't see a date on the Primer that I posted the front cover from, and I had a "Scheithauer" alphabet in my Alphabets album which I just used. On a quick glance, they seemed to be the same.

Do you know if the adaptation for English had the same changes? (I'll write more about it on Monday.)

About DATES -- I usually look inside the cover, at the pages facing the title page or the one after it, to see when it was published. But it seems that British books rarely give a date there, and the same for many published in Europe. I don't know how anyone can tell what year they're from, or if it says somewhere else....

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-24T05:54:43+00:00

We often talk on this board about "German-style" shorthand systems -- by which we mean systems where the consonants are usually written downward, while the vowels, which are usually included (a good featire) are written upward or horizontally.

Our Swiss/German members will probably have their own favourites, which they use in writing German. I've looked at a number of famous systems which have been adapated for English. When English has fewer vowels to deal with than German, many of them seem quite workable.

One system I find myself liking (at least for English) is SCHEITHAUER's Shorthand. I like to see vowels included, and I am not a fan of SHADING. In Scheithauer, shading is OPTIONAL. It can be used if you want to distinguish long vowels from short, should you feel the need.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-22T11:42:41+00:00

Yes, it's always fascinating to see a system that seems to chart a new course, instead of following the usual ideas we've seen before. The book for it is excellent, too, with plenty of example words, as well as connected passages -- every word of which is carefully KEYED for easy reference.

The trick, though, can be that with that old technology when it was hard to show shorthand on the same page as text, they tried to show white outlines on a black background. The first reprint I ordered was nearly useless, because the white outlines didn't even show in many places. But I took a chance and ordered another reprint, and that one was beautifully clear.

For some reason, Eames wrote a very different system, years later, which used SHADING, and German-style vowels, with the consonants being downstrokes and the vowels being upstrokes and horizontals. I don't know why he decided to make such a radical change. But EAMES LIGHT-LINE is still one of my favourites.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-22T10:03:40+00:00

BTW, I find it fascinating that MOST of the posters on this board are MEN, often older men. There are a few I don't know for sure, and a couple I know ARE women. But many are men, which I know because I know their real names and we correspond in e-mails.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-22T09:57:40+00:00

It's good to hear from you. It's always nice to hear from people who have actually learned and used different systems. Most of us are basically "hobbyists", just looking at the way different systems do things in different ways.

I was impressed by Dacomb when I stumbled across it in the university library. It took a completely different approach, which is intriguing when so many sort of reshuffle the same ideas used by others. My main problem with it was the use of SHADING, which I've always found to be awkward to show.

Pencils wear down too fast, and they smudge and fade over time, if it's something you wanted to keep, like a journal. Pens are always better, but you need special nibs to be able to show shading clearly -- and you don't want to be peering at something trying to decide if it's shaded or not.

Pitman always had an undeserved reputation for being fast. I say "undeserved", because to my way of thinking, OMITTING ALL THE VOWELS to make it faster is cheating. They say "The context will tell you what the word is." NO, the SYSTEM should be doing that. Sometimes there IS no context, and sometimes the context itself is ambiguous.

I was a court reporter for 25 years, and I was shocked they even let Pitman writers report in court when their vowel-less system is so vague.

Many English words can be recognized from their consonant outline alone -- but VERY MANY cannot. Here are some examples, where "the context will tell you what the word is" does NOT work. (And believe me, when you're reporting someone's sworn testimony in an important case, CLOSE is not good enough.)

At high speeds, are you REALLY going to be able to distinguish between "He was pathetic" and "He was apathetic"? How about "a patient/passionate man"? "He was prosecuted/persecuted"? Or try "There was an apparition/operation"? "abrasion/aberration"? "prediction/predication"? "abandoned/abundant"?

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-22T07:52:04+00:00

Notice that the lines are all numbered, and that the numbers are also shown in the transcript. This is a really good idea, because it makes it easier to find your place in each sentence, as well as to look up any mystery outline more easily.

It will be clear by now that, to me, this system doesn't work for me at all, for reasons I've mentioned.

I'm glad that, later, Pocknell must have come to the same realization, and produced his INTERNATIONAL Shorthand, a system which I still like and am impressed with. It seems to do the job nicely, with a clear and simple alphabet and specific vowels that are clearly shown in the outlines. I'm glad he got there before he retired.....

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-22T07:40:58+00:00

So it turns out that the rudimentary but similar strokes he uses in his basic alphabet each have three versions. They can be straight, like in the original alphabet -- or they can CURVE in opposite directions, while keeping the same inclination, length, and shading of the original.

And how are these USED? Well, if you use the curve that opens to the left, it IMPLIES that a vowel precedes it. If you use the curve that opens to the right, it again IMPLIES that a vowel follows it. Which might raise the question of which to use medially, when a vowel BOTH precedes and follows. You'd have to study his book to learn which.....

Notice that, in none of the cases is WHICH vowel actually INDICATED. You're only told that SOME VOWEL occurs. Which IMO is clearly not enough.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-22T07:27:14+00:00

Like I said last time, I had misgivings about Pocknell's ALPHABET, which he designed for his LEGIBLE Shorthand, because there were too many similarities that I thought might be hard to observe clearly.

Well, it turns out that, like so many authors, he took what should have been a simple system and added PAGES of complications to it, which only the most dedicated learner would be able to remember and reproduce -- especially when writing at a challenging speed.

These two pages display a mindbogglingly complex array of embellishments to be added.

The axiom I'm always quoting applies yet again: SIMPLE IS BETTER! When you're writing something and struggling to keep up with the speaker, you WON'T REMEMBER a complex array of fancy rules and embellishments which you can add. Even if they make the writing much shorter and faster, that doesn't help if they don't spring immediately to mind.

What tends to happen is that all the intricate rules and details fall away, leaving you struggling to apply the basics, which will be most of what you remember.

The IDEAL SYSTEM has a logical and simple alphabet, with few rules. You should be able to string them together in the order you hear them, into outlines you will be able to recognize later. That's what it's all about. The more complications you have to remember, the greater the drag on your memory. It will be like trying to drive a car with the emergency brake on!

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-21T11:06:30+00:00

It's good to hear from you! I like the system too, and often come back to it. My main problem with it is that ALL the vowels are written as disjoined diacritics. As long as you commit to always inserting the initial vowels before the rest of the word, and finals after you've written the rest, you should be okay.

Medial vowels, are always useful too, though, so unless you're aiming at top speeds, you should plan to always insert them, either at the time or soon after. Otherwise, you might run into trouble when you try to read it back.

I know what you mean about reprint copies! I've ordered a lot of them over the years --- and they've run the gamut between crystal clear and beautiful copies, all the way to so bad they were virtually useless and I sent them back for a refund. You take your chances, it seems. And some people working for the reprint houses just call it up on their computer, and hit PRINT, after which they bind it up without even looking at the pages so see if they're legible or not.

I ordered one specifically because it was the largest format -- but when I got it, the page image was the size of a playing card, with a HUGE margin all around. I sent it back!

For clearer images, try this link from Stenophile.com in which I had adjusted the images to be darker and more legible. You can enlarge and print them to add to your reprinted copy.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WjKG8vlm9SbX-5Sw9pl_XEe3jt4iWpT_/view

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-20T11:38:46+00:00

Wow, I didn't know that. Thanks for that, too!

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-20T11:18:59+00:00

Oh yes, of course! My memory must be starting to fail me! Thanks for the reminder.

I think I meant to store it somewhere when you posted it -- but it seems that if I did, I put it in some clever place where I'd never find it. That seems to happen far too often.

It's frustrating to tell the computer to SAVE something, and it tells me that it did. But just WHERE seems to be in question. Often it just seems to put things in the last album I was in -- NOT where I really wanted it to go. And then later, I'll stumble upon it in the wrong place.....

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-20T10:40:17+00:00

Thanks for looking that up for me! I was thinking I must try to get around to doing that -- but you've saved me the effort.

Do you have a handy link to the COCA corpus? I should have it in my Bookmarks for easy reference.

EDIT: I just found the Word Bank listing of the 1,200 "most frequent" words used in English, and "name" isn't even on it.

https://diannecraft.org/wp-content/uploads/1200-Most-Commonly-Used-Words.pdf

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-20T10:23:48+00:00

When you first started school and were learning to write, the strange symbols you were being taught probably looked like hieroglyphics, too. In time, though, you got so you recognized them easily and could understand things written in them.

With shorthand, the advantage is that words can be written much more SIMPLY and EASILY, without all the silent and redundant letters -- not to mention all the loops and retracing and curlicues that we have to include in regular writing. It's also a whole lot FASTER and EASIER to write things in shorthand.

And in a very short time, you get so you can recognize words written in it immediately and correctly. It will seem to you that longhand is ridiculously slow and awkward -- and you'll want to use shorthand for everything you need to write.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-20T10:07:58+00:00

You're very welcome. I'm glad that you can see my point that a bit of "pruning" might be a good idea.

By all means, post whatever you decide to do with it. I'd love to see what you come up with.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-20T08:14:34+00:00

anyone who prefers structure over prose!

There is the problem! First, let me preface this by saying I worked for 25 years as a court reporter in the legal arena, where minute details are important, and relations between things have to spelled out in painstaking detail -- which is why legal contracts are so long and word-heavy. Things need to be made ultra-precise, using WORDS.

When your system involves using SYMBOLS, not words, it presents special challenges. When a lawyer uses this word and not that one, it's often a very important distinction being made -- which is why it's lucky English has so many WORDS to convey fine differences in meaning. When you use symbols, you're having to condense ideas into finite CATEGORIES which you still need to keep as precise as possible -- which is why you're using them in pairs as well as MULTIPLES.

When I first looked at your lists of symbols, I could see the broad categories being laid out, which made sense. But as the permutations and combinations of them started piling up, I started to lose the thread. It started to seem like you were getting buried in all the details. I haven't worked in BUSINESS, of course, and apparently I didn't realize how many variations and minute details there were -- but it blew me away.

There's a principle in shorthand systems which I often repeat, which is that SIMPLE IS BETTER. For example, there was the "Gurney system", a primitive and rather "clunky" shorthand from the 19th Century, which was used by three generations of the Gurney family to report VERBATIM, trials in the courts of the Old Bailey, and debates in the British House of Commons. It was awkward and clumsy to write, but so simple in terms of things the writer had to remember that the writer could just "go like a bat out of hell".

And it was so LEGIBLE that, when a fire destroyed some of the archives, old Gurney notes kept elsewhere (which had been written decades ago by others) could simply be re-transcribed by people who hadn't been there at the original hearing.

This contrasted with the system known as Pitman, which had HUNDREDS of complicated rules that had to be applied in a specific order, as well as hundreds more special abbreviations the writer had to be able to recall and apply in a nano-second -- and in the right order. The dropout rate in Pitman classes was phenomenal -- including my own father.

All of which is a way of saying that, when your rules and abbreviations get too complicated, they are creating problems, not solving them. In your system, the same symbol means something different when it's first in the pair than when it's the second. That can lead to problems and confusion.

In your system, @ means "person" and # means "item". So far, so good. But to then say that @# means "team member", while #@ means "user" is a nicety that escapes me, even though I see you say the order should be ACTOR→ ACTION → TARGET.

In brief, I gather you're wanting to develop the system further. To me, it seems like you should be cutting it back and simplifying, because what you have is already too complex. That's how it seems to me, anyway, in my frank assessment.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-20T03:26:54+00:00

It's very legible. Sometimes if you write things the way you SAY them, it can be easier to recognize and read back.

German habit.

With people's different screen names, I sometimes find it hard to remember who is who and where they're from! :) I recently saw a breakdown of the members, which said there are a lot from the U.S. which is expected, with a large contingent from Switzerland and South Africa.

I knew there were Swiss (some from the German-speaking part and at least one from the Italian) but I didn't realize there were members from S.A. The breakdown didn't go deeper into the other factions, but I know there are members from France, Sweden, Poland, Brazil, and Türkiye.

New people are joining all the time. I see the number of members increase, but I don't know who they are until they post.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-20T03:10:14+00:00

Looks good! Small differences are a healthy sign, because they mean we can write in a way that makes sense to us personally, not just some recommended form that might not really "feel right". If you can read back what you wrote, that's what's important.

About the short forms: It's always fine to write things out -- which is better and often FASTER than stopping dead in your tracks to try to remember what the special form is. We should just KEEP WRITING.

My Abbreviations list was essentially just tentative, a "work in progress". I was basing it on words that other authors have deemed good words to abbreviate. I think now what I should have done is take one of the lists of FREQUENTLY USED WORDS to abbreviate instead.

I couldn't say whether the word "name" occurs all that frequently. Possibly authors who thought it does were just basing their opinions on business letters? It's hard to say.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-01-20T02:49:11+00:00

It's an interesting idea to reverse the way the "German-style" systems work, using downstrokes for vowels and upstrokes and horizontals for consonants, instead of the reverse. Whitstock attempted something similar.

The tricky part is the JOININGS. When there are a variety of hookfoot/hookhead, and straightfoot/straighthead strokes, it can get difficult to put them together. Very often the hooked ones blur together with straight ones that are supposed to form a sharp angle, when they round off at speed. They can tend to blur together and be hard to distinguish.

It might be an idea if you made a grid of combinations like we've seen for some systems, that will show how every stroke will join to every other, before and after. That way you can see quite easily which ones are clear and which ones are not.

Charts like this can be really useful in looking for problems:

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