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Many forms of shorthand exist. The method was more popular in the past, when anything needing transcribing had to be written in real-time. This was a valuable skill to secretaries and journalists. Shorthand is basically a way of writing that represents common words, phrases and sentences in symbols or abbreviations that the writer can write faster, to allow people to write as fast as people speak.

1 Classification

Some systems have signs that are not based on the Latin alphabet, whereas other systems are explicitly intended to resemble the Latin alphabet. Some consider that strictly speaking, only the former are shorthand. There are between one and two dozen examples of the latter in the United States, such as Stenoscript, Stenospeed, and Forkner, which use both symbols and alphabetic characters, to one extent or another.

It is useful to classify the shorthand systems according to the way how vowels are represented:

• 'Normal' vowel signs (no distinction between vowel signs and consonant signs), e.g. Gregg.
• Other ways of expressing the vowels:
  • expression of the first vowel by the height of the word in relation to the line, e.g. Pitman;
  • optional expression of the vowels by diacritics added to the word, e.g. Pitman;
  • expression by the width of the joining stroke that leads to the following consonant sign, the height of the following consonant sign in relation to the preceding one, and the line pressure of the following consonant sign, e.g. in most German shorthand systems;
  • no expression of the vowels at all except for a dot before the word for any initial vowel and a dot after the word for any ending vowel, e.g. Taylor.

2 Common English shorthand systems

One of the most widely known forms of shorthand is the Pitman method, developed by Isaac Pitman in 1837. Issac's brother Benn Pitman, who lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, was responsible for introducing the method to America. The method has been adapted for 15 languages. The system is phonetic as it is the word sounds that are written rather than the letters. For this reason, the system is sometimes known as phonography, meaning 'sound writing' in Greek. One of the reasons this method allows fast transcription is that vowel sounds are optional when only consonants are needed to determine a word. Pitman's system replaced the system developed by Samuel Taylor in 1786Events May 21 Trial of the Necklace affair ends in Paris August 8 Mont Blanc was climbed for the first time by Dr. Michael-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat. September 2 Hurricane in England Choctaw Treaty Chickasaw Treaty Robert Burns publishes Poems, C, the first English shorthand system that succeeded to be used all over the English speaking world.

Although Pitman's method was extremely popular at first (and is still commonly used, especially in the UK) its popularity has been superseded (especially in the States) by a method developed by John Robert Gregg in 18881888 is a leap year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). In Germany, 1888 is known as the 1888 Year of Three Emperors. Events January 3 91cm telescope first used at Lick Observatory January 12 ? Blizzards in Dakota and Montana, Minnesota, Nebr. Gregg's systemGregg Shorthand is a form of Shorthand that was invented by John Robert Gregg in 1888. Several editions have been made of this system: Pre-Anniversary the form created in 1888; Anniversary a greatly revised but still somewhat difficult form created in 192, like Pitman's, is phonetic, but has the advantage of being "light-line". While Pitman's system uses thick and thin strokes to distinguish related sounds, Gregg's uses only thin strokes and makes some of the same distinctions by the length of the stroke.