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Gregg shorthand was once the most popular form of stenography in the United States. Almost every high school and college was teaching it. For business dictation, it was perfect. For courtroom record keeping, it was ideal. With the invention of dictation machines and the publishing of the substantially slow Series 90 version, however, shorthand was quickly discarded in the business world. Now, one would be very hard-pressed to find a school teaching shorthand or a high school student that is even aware of its existence.
Its rival, Pitman shorthand, uses line thickness to discriminate between two similar sounds, but Gregg shorthand uses the same thickness throughout and discriminates between similar sounds by the length of the stroke. Gregg shorthand has also been released for several other languages.
Gregg Shorthand is a phonetic writing system, which means it records the sounds of the speaker, not the English spelling. It uses the f stroke for the f sound in funnel, telephone, and laugh. All silent letters are omitted. The image on the right shows the strokes of Gregg shorthand Simplified. The sounds are represented by the International Phonetic Alphabet. The system is written from left to right and the letters are joined. Sh (and zh), Ch, and J (or Dzh) are written downward, while t and d are written upward. X is expressed by putting a slight backward slant on the s, though the word beginning ex is just written es. W, when in the middle of a word, is notated with a short dash under the next vowel. Therefore, the letter Q is usually a k with a dash underneath the next vowel. If z need be distinguised from s, a small tick drawn at a right angle from the s may be written to make this distinction.
Many of the letters shown are also what are called "brief forms". For instance, instead of writing, hwech for which, the Gregg stenographer just writes ch. These brief forms are shown on the image to the right. There are several others not shown, however. For instance, "please" is written simply pl, and "govern" is gv. These brief forms make Gregg shorthand much faster.
Another mechanism for increasing the speed of shorthand is phrasing. Phrasing is including several smaller distict forms into one outline, like "it may be that the" could be written in one outline, "(tm)ab(th)a(th)". "I have not been able" would be written, "avnba".
The vowels in Gregg shorthand are divided into three main groups that very rarely require further notation. The a is a large circle, and can stand for the a in apple, father, and ache. The e is a small circle, and can stand for the e in feed and help, the i in trim and marine, and the obscure vowel in her and learn. The i represents the i in fine. The o is a small hook that represents the al in talk, the o in cone, jot', and order. The u is a tiny hook that expresses the three vowel sounds heard in the words who, up, and foot. It also expresses a w at the beginning of a word.
There are special vowel markings for certain diphthongs. The ow in how is just an a circle followed by an u hook. The io in lion is written with a small circle inside a large circle. The ia in piano and repudiate is notated as a large circle with a dot in its center (if ea need be distinguished, it is notated with a small vertical line inside the circle instead of the dot). The u in united is notated with a small circle followed by an u hook above it.
Due to the very simple alphabet, Gregg shorthand is very fast in writing. It takes a great deal of practice, however, to master it. Speeds of 270 WPM have been reached with this simple system before, and those notes are still very legible to anyone else (unlike Pitman).