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My aim is to encourage you if you are thinking of learning shorthand, or relearning from rusty, and to make available my own experiences.

Shorthand belongs in your life, not just in the office, and this was Sir Isaac Pitman's primary intention when he invented the system. When you want to write something, there has to be a very good reason not to do it in shorthand. For the novice, it's the quickest way to make it totally familiar and stress free. Even when you are proficient, shorthand never runs out of interest, as there is always something to learn and new words to find the outlines for.

I learned Pitman's New Era Shorthand in 1973-4 at Woolwich College for Further Education in London, under the skilled guidance and gentle encouragement of Miss Jefferson, who retired several years later. She showed no partiality to slow or fast learners, and everyone was encouraged equally. My classmates were there because they chose to be, and every one of them wanted to learn and earn. The practicality of our secretarial/business training was the complete opposite of the lessons that one enjoys or endures in compulsory schooling, where there is often no obvious reason to remember any of the facts beyond passing exams.

I obtained a Teach Yourself Shorthand book and briefly read up on the subject, several weeks ahead of starting at the College. This took away the strangeness of the shorthand, and made the first lessons much easier. We used the New Course book in the classroom.

We were taught Business English by Mrs Bravery, another lovely lady, who also did some shorthand with us. Our typewriting teacher Mrs Trimnell was very friendly and efficient, and I remember one lesson when she stood in for Miss Jefferson: she expected and insisted that we write fast, and it was our first taste of rapid dictation, two words to be repeated along the line until she said stop. There were no concessions to our delicate novice status, it was like constantly running after your hat in a gale. We had gone from drawing outlines to writing outlines in one lesson, from walking to running, and never returned to our previous more leisurely frame of mind. Speed was no longer just a word, it was our goal, and I am sure Miss Jefferson noticed the change in our demeanour on her return.

My "speed mate" was a left-hander, and together we made a matching pair, using both hands between us on the higher speed dictations. It was disconcerting to see shorthand written so quickly with a left hand, but no doubt she was more used to watching people use the "wrong hand".

Sometimes Miss Jefferson would dictate something for both of us without telling us what the speed would be. "Would you like to have a go at a really fast little piece?" she would ask, realising that students tend to give up when something appears impossible. We struggled through that 30 seconds of dictation, relieved only by the thought that it was a super-stretcher, done for fun. She gave the rest of the class their dictations and came back to us. "Did you manage to read anything back?" – "Only about 10 words." With relish she told us it was 200 wpm and although we were shocked, her eyes were beaming with delight. The others were delighted too, because they had been invited to have a go as well. I think they assumed it must be faintly possible, otherwise the teacher would not ask them, and on this premise some of them duly wrote what they could, although gasps were heard after about 3 seconds. A glow of satisfaction filled the room, because of the attempt rather than the results. The most important point is that, because of that attempted high-speed spurt, the rest of that lesson's dictations for all of us seemed very slow, and Miss Jefferson certainly knew what she was doing.

At the end of the 9-months course, I obtained 120 wpm Royal Social of Arts certificate, and 130 wpm Pitman Examinations Institute certificate. At the time the PEI exam was considered to be slightly easier to pass than the RSA.

Teeline had just been invented, which I viewed as a greatly simplified way to write condensed longhand letters of the alphabet. Compared with what I was learning, the outlines struck me as being very much longer, more angular and less flowing. It was clearly aimed at those who preferred something similar to longhand, and it could be incorporated into longhand writing while being learned, thus bringing the benefits of shorthand to even more people.

When I started work as a typist, one of the ladies wrote Gregg shorthand, just as fast as the rest of us did our Pitman's, so I spent a short time investigating that, to see how it compared. Interesting as it was, I quickly decided that those hours could be better spent speeding up my own shorthand. I attended evening classes and in 1980 I gained a Royal Society of Arts 140 wpm and a Pitman Examinations Institute 150 wpm. After that I ran out of energy for further speed learning and the tiring evening classes after a full day's work, although I always maintained the habit of looking up and practising outlines that I had stumbled over. The evening classes were mainly dictations, and a lot of practice at home was also necessary, to work on the faults and omissions shown up by the dictations. Classes alone are not sufficient to get the speed up. It is well worth taking exams at various speeds, and not letting everything rely on one exam at the end of the course.

This quote from a shorthand book by Bates Torrey sums up my own endeavours to present Pitman's New Era. Although I have not watched lots of students work, other than my classmates at college and various evening classes in subsequent years, I do vividly remember all the difficulties that we eventually (and cheerfully) overcame as we went through the college year, the evening classes and the examinations:

“To the Student: This book has been made especially for you after watching a great many of you work, and inspired by your work, appreciating your needs. Likewise your discouragements have been noted, and a mitigation sought for and found. The aim has been to render shorthand study interesting. If interest can be awakened early, and maintained continuously, good work and tangible results will follow. Assuredly work is necessary in shorthand study; but it would be unreasonable to expect it to continue with stolid doggedness when all the conditions were unfavorable. We have endeavored to make them favorable by divesting the subject of disagreeable and useless features, and clothing it with pleasanter ones. We trust that success has attended our efforts. At any rate may it attend yours. Therefore work - win!” Bates Torrey, Instruction in Practical Shorthand, 1893 (Graham version of Phonography)

I always enjoyed writing and drawing, playing with paper and ink, and almost stumbling across shorthand, when I saw school friends writing it. Learning it, was the best thing I ever did. I discovered something I thoroughly enjoyed, that was practical and artistic at the same time, and one hundred per cent useful all the time. The skills we all learned on the business course required attention, thought, work, application, determination and practice, which everyone undertook with enthusiasm, mainly because the skills were in great demand in office work. We all acquired varying shorthand certificates and went out with the tools of the trade literally in our hands. At the time I rather thought that even attempting a shorthand speed exam deserved a medal for bravery, whether one passed or not.

Beryl Pratt
London UK

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