Sir Isaac Pitman
I think my mother wrote shorthand. I remember her scrawling, at a breathless pace, what appeared to be unintelligible marks on stenographers paper. It was gibberish then, and it is gibberish now. But stunning in its economy and gesture. These two pages are a perfect example of Pitman Shorthand, popular in the UK, and second only to Gregg Shorthand in the US. Gregg Shorthand is far less compelling, and even a little boring, because of the uniform thickness of the line. For more information on the Pitman method, go here. Images from here.
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Thursday 05.19.22 at 5:50 am
Indeed!
I learnt Pitman shorthand (New Era) over 40(!) years ago. My highest (achieved) speed was 150wpm in 1986. To date, whenever I hear someone says/sings in English, I’d let my mind transcribe the sounds in shorthand. So I would hope I could manage to write in over 110wpm. For me, shorthand is more than a vocational skill; it helped me in learning English as a second language. It is also a “perfect” system in that all the words in the English language can be represented phonetically. As an advanced writer, I also liked that I could create my own shortforms (especially in “phrasings”), so possibilities are endless.