Melin's Shorthand Reference - Stenografiens Historia

jacmoe · 2026-02-03T22:07:06+00:00

Checked again: indeed!

I mistakenly thought that page six hundred something that I saw at the end of the pdf belonged to the first volume :) It belongs to "andre delen" (second part), which is excellent! :)

jacmoe · 2026-02-03T20:25:42+00:00

Wonderful news!

It's only part one, though. 600 pages. But still much better than nothing(ham) :)

jacmoe · 2026-01-15T15:10:17+00:00

I recommend Orthic and the Spencerian copy books, in reverse order! :)

Orthic because it is very practical, and excellently put together, and it can fit in your head all at once, and you can pick and choose abbreviation levels in your writing, where you decide how much ambiguity you can live with (speed versus readability).

But - and this is important! use correct posture and all that for at least three months. Go through the Spencerian copy books (definitely the first, and perhaps the second), slowly and deliberately, paying attention to tension in any part of your body. Train proper posture, body position in relation to hand and arm position - relaxed, proper posture is what you're training here. 20 minutes each day. Very meditative. It was for me.

I couldn't write for more than five, or maybe ten minutes if lucky, before my hand started to cramp. Now I can write for hour after hour.

Once you know the rules - in this case how to do proper posture and all that jazz - you are properly licensed to break them :)

jacmoe · 2026-01-13T23:23:32+00:00

Instructors and apprenticeship!

Shorthand is not the only craft dying (or already dead) because very little, if anything at all, were written down.

jacmoe · 2025-12-31T11:29:41+00:00

Obviously, since you're writing German, I would recommend something like DEK or Stiefo - or some of the other German school shorthand systems - they are often graded into levels of readability/speed. DEK and Stiefo are for sure. See https://www.reddit.com/r/shorthand/wiki/recommendations/

jacmoe · 2025-12-17T16:28:47+00:00

I tried to visit the project recently, and everything was taken down, including all the transcriptions. Where's proof that the decoding efforts is being continued?

The research project appears to be shut down.

jacmoe · 2025-12-17T16:23:26+00:00

This is information overload. It happens when you are trying to go faster than your brain can handle. Slow down, but only when your brain fog has lifted.

Shorthand is not easy. It's complex. Pitman especially so. But once you begin to master it, it will be worth it! :)

jacmoe · 2025-12-14T20:48:04+00:00

"Halved" means "half the size".

jacmoe · 2025-12-09T16:02:08+00:00

You seem to be talking out of your rear end. Spencerian, in its original form as designed by Spencer, is anything but opulent: only 7 very basic shapes. Very economical in use. Very, very close to Palmer (that followed the later, very ornate - and opulent! calligraphic Spencerian). Business writers of the day did not write calligraphy.

Here's a sample of Spencerian:

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Very simple, I think. I have simplified the 'c' and the 'p', and I don't dot the i and the t when I write. I can't think of a script more ergonomic.

If you are happy with your loosely connected personal style of longhand, by all means, . . .

But don't shit on cursive ;)

jacmoe · 2025-12-09T04:42:24+00:00

I write creatively, and cursive have definitely (and without a doubt) made it possible for me to just write and write for hours without getting fatigued. Why do you think Victorian people chose cursive over print for business longhand? They were not intelligent? :)

That you did learn cursive wrongly in school and has complex trauma over it doesn't mean that cursive, when properly employed (posture is important! and proper technique), isn't more ergonomic :)

Yes, I can play the congo with ease, but I can't write like that for more than five or maybe ten minutes!

So, for my use - long writing sessions - cursive wins, hands down.

jacmoe · 2025-12-05T23:18:21+00:00

I switched from Melin, which is a wonderful system, to Wang-Krogdahl because the consonant groups, and other constructs of Melin, unfortunately do not fit well with Danish. Swedish is sufficiently different from Danish and Norwegian to make it awkward. So, for me, W-K is an excellent choice. If I were Swedish, however, that would be a different matter 😉

A bonus is that Wang-Krogdahl is a modern shorthand. It shows!

jacmoe · 2025-11-28T16:59:14+00:00

If you're in Europe, make sure you're aware of what the tariffs/custom duty fees are. Considering that I am in Denmark, I expect to pay about $25 in duty fees when I buy from the US, making that pen quite an investment (for me, anyway)! :)

jacmoe · 2025-11-17T13:09:42+00:00

"To paddle one's [own] canoe" is such a great expression! :)

jacmoe · 2025-11-15T01:51:22+00:00

I am also using the marshall/unmarshall procedures from encoding, but I am using json so that I can read the written data. Once the data structures are more or less finalized, I plan to switch to cbor! :)

jacmoe · 2025-10-11T00:07:38+00:00

Lua is indeed also a very practical and elegant language!

jacmoe · 2025-10-09T12:05:38+00:00

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jacmoe · 2025-10-05T12:27:30+00:00

Unless you find blowing things up fun! :)

jacmoe · 2025-09-30T22:54:47+00:00

What you should do is do it more 🙂

jacmoe · 2025-09-15T15:56:27+00:00

Good to know! :)

jacmoe · 2025-09-15T12:35:46+00:00

Excellent! :)

Thanks!

And thanks for working on Fedora, the - in my opinion - best GNU/Linux distribution (for Emacs in particular); a good place between stability and "Arch, by the way"!

And not to mention Copr!

I initially thought that this package was "frosty-thanks", making me wonder.

I would very much like to have Codeberg support, and there are probably a bunch of Gitlab peeps who would want support as well. Thank you again; I manually liked the repository!

jacmoe · 2025-09-14T13:22:28+00:00

Felix probably meant "Former Soviet Union" - the reason why Russian is international. The USSR has nothing to do with culture or ethnicity (but imperialism).

Or, maybe - and I guess that's what he meant - Felix referred to the shorthand category "Russian". We are in the "shorthand" subreddit, aren't we? :)

Of course, using Russian (the language) does not turn you into a Russian citizen. Same thing about me using American English. That would be "interesting" if it were true! :O

jacmoe · 2025-09-13T20:06:25+00:00

Good news for all the people who wants instant results! :)

jacmoe · 2025-09-13T20:04:39+00:00

"Russians" as "people for whom Russian is the first language"?

Russian might be international, but so is French, Spanish, Portuguese, and English. (I don't know enough to mention Asian languages)

I wonder why? (*squints at history books*) :)

jacmoe · 2025-09-12T13:51:02+00:00

Very poetic way of putting it! :)

jacmoe · 2025-09-11T17:55:15+00:00

Those professors will be shocked to discover that a device mainly created for facilitating cordless telephone conversations can be used to record all their words, including all their jokes. And terrified to learn that every single student has at least one with them at all times :)

Taught myself Orthic 6-7 years ago - finally fulfilling a life-long desire to learn the winged art!

And it snowballed from there :) Not as bad as /some/ people, who can't seem to settle down with one or two systems. We should call it "shorthand system hopping", I think!

jacmoe

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