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SECTION 1

About

Notes for Beginners

Pen and Paper

Dictation

How To Practise

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SECTION 2 THEORY

Theory

SECTION 3 LISTS

Short forms

Contractions

Phrasing

Distinguishing Outlines

Vocabulary


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On this page:

My Other websites

Portraits of Sir Isaac Pitman

Shorthand Books

Writing Equipment

Shorthand Websites

Shorthand Transcription

Shorthand Articles

Dictation

Typing/Dictation Software

Shorthand Interest

Please note that information here is gained only from the websites, and you should check out authors' credentials before buying goods or services.

MY OTHER WEBSITES

Pitman's New Era Shorthand Lessons logo

https://long-live-pitmans-shorthand-lessons.org.uk This is for the complete beginner, consisting of 60 graded Lessons pages, 58 Exercises pages, and downloads of Facility Drill PDFs.

Pitman's New Era Shorthand Reading logo

https://www.long-live-pitmans-shorthand-reading.org.uk Extensive reading material in the form of blog articles in shorthand with text key, snippets in scribbled shorthand, downloads, facility drills and zips of MP3 dictations, covering 2012 to 2021.

https://www.youtube.com/c/BerylPratt
Shorthand being written, demos of Noodler's Flex Pen and folding the miniature booklets.

https://www.yellow-teddy.org.uk
Yellow Teddy keeps an extensive diary of his activities and travels, as a change from looking up outlines in the dictionary for me.

PORTRAITS OF SIR ISAAC PITMAN

National Portrait Gallery, London

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw05032/Sir-Isaac-Pitman Oil painting

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw253105/Sir-Isaac-Pitman Monochrome photogravure

Mary Evans Picture Library, London
https://www.maryevans.com Picture No. 10220330, this is the photograph that appears in the Wikipedia article on Isaac Pitman

Bath In Time
https://bathintime.co.uk/image-library/image-overview/poster/12149/posterid/12149.html Bath Central Library's photo of Pitman's publishing works in Twerton, UK.

SHORTHAND BOOKS

The New Era version of the Pitman Shorthand Instructor is available as free PDF download from:

https://archive.org/details/pitmansshorthand00pitm

The version below contains the Key to exercises as well, but is very low quality resolution, therefore use the above high resolution one for the main body, and the one below for the key, pages 345 to 448 of the PDF:

https://ia601608.us.archive.org/15/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.459783/2015.459783.Pitman-Shorthand.pdf

The large New Era dictionary is available as a free download from:

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.449114

The above dictionary also lists the differences between New Era and its predecessor Centenary.

For pre-1922 shorthand:

Centenary dictionary: https://archive.org/details/englishshorthand00pitmiala

Ebay UK always has a plentiful supply of Pitman's Shorthand books, far more than the Ebays for other countries. Do check that the version says New Era on the cover, spine or title page, as "Centenary" and "20th Century" are the older versions before the theory revisions of 1922.

Ebooks I cannot advise on Ebooks or PDF downloads, whether free or paid for. Some may be legitimate, but I feel that some may have been done from scans of books that are not out of copyright and without permission. You might wish to check first whether the book you are interested in is already available on the free Internet Archive.

Internet Archive

The American Libraries Internet Archive has very many digitized old shorthand books that you can read online and most can also be downloaded as PDFs, enabling you to avoid paying antique prices and spend it instead on your New Era books or shorthand pens. Pre-New Era shorthand will confuse the beginner, but the advice, discussion and shorthand learning tips are always interesting to peruse, and are equally relevant today. You can clipboard the interesting sections and build up your own "advice" file, especially beneficial for those learning on their own.

Please be aware that many of the Internet Archive PDFs are now being offered by third parties as reprints with a recent "publishing date" and the unwary buyer may end up with an outdated historical version of shorthand, whether Pitman's or otherwise, when they thought they were buying a modern shorthand book. Some of the adverts have small print advising you of this, as a disclaimer against scanning faults, but some have nothing to indicate the actual age of the text being offered.

The Internet Archive site also provides OCR-generated text versions of their books, which often contain mistakes in recognition because of the lack of crispness of the original letterpress pages, as well as strings of strange characters as it has failed to cope with the shorthand outlines. I believe most New Era books are still in copyright, therefore they do not appear in that Archive. It is not guaranteed that any of the digitized books are actually out of copyright, and so you are not necessarily free to do as you like with them. The archive is for scholarly and research purposes, see their terms of use.

Dates of Pitman's Shorthand versions:

20th Century = 1900
Centenary = 1913
New Era = 1922
Pitman 2000/Shorterhand = 1970

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WRITING EQUIPMENT

Pens & Ink

Using a fountain pen with a generous ink flow for your normal longhand writing will accustom you to writing fast with a light touch, a good habit to have if you should later on acquire a flexible-nibbed pen for shorthand writing. However, if you try to write Pitman's Shorthand with a normal steel-nibbed pen, or a cheap one with miserly ink flow, this will have the opposite effect of causing you to dig the paper, in a fruitless effort to form the thick strokes.

If buying from Ebay – undescribed yellow-looking nibs are not always gold, they may be unyielding gold-plated steel, or even plain steel with yellow reflections from the surroundings. I prefer to see "14K" "18K" etc on the nib neck.

www.gouletpens.com based in Virginia, USA - inks, pens and sundries, from where you can obtain the excellent and inexpensive Noodler's Flex Pens for your shorthand. Further information and demos on their Ink Nouveau website www.inknouveau.com

www.purepens.co.uk Pure Pens supply Noodler's pens and inks. They are part of Niche Pens Limited www.nichepens.co.uk and are based in Newport, Wales, UK.

http://noodlersink.com Their pens are dedicated to being simple to adjust and disassemble, so that you can fine-tune to your requirements or reuse vintage and other nibs in them, and kept at low price.

Both Goulet and Noodlers have many informative videos on YouTube.

www.fountainpennetwork.com "Categorized forum with discussion topics such as repairs, history, news, penmanship and calligraphy." Ideal place for detailed info and advice from pen enthusiasts. Site also has calendar of Pen Club meetings and classified adverts of pens for sale.

www.thewritingdesk.co.uk Inks, pens and sundries. Based in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK.

SHORTHAND WEBSITES

The Joy of Pitman Shorthand
https://pitmanshorthand.homestead.com/index.html

Gives an overview of the system, with many items of general shorthand interest. Writer based in Toronto, Canada.

Reddit Shorthand Forum
https://www.reddit.com/r/shorthand/ Discussion on all forms of shorthand, present and past

Shorthand Shorthand Shorthand
https://shorthandshorthandshorthand.com Devoted to pen shorthand, mainly Gregg but everyone welcome. History, tips and good advice from a shorthand enthusiast, and an especially interesting page comparing shorthand writer versus tape recorder.

Gregg Shorthand
https://greggshorthand.github.io/index.html  (ex gregg angelfishy net) The definitive site for Gregg Shorthand, including full teaching materials/texts, lessons and extensive descriptions of the system's revisions over the years.

https://gregg-shorthand.com Interactive blog for enthusiasts and learners of any form of the Gregg system.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2221533661/ "Gregg Shorthand Readers, Writers and Fans"

German Shorthand
https://www.stenografenverein.de Promotes and teaches German Unified Shorthand - DEK (Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift), and keyboard, computer and writing skills. Based in Langen (Nr Frankfurt) Germany.

They have an archive collection of historic shorthand books, literature and objects relating to shorthand, to preserve this knowledge for future generations, and are keen to increase this: https://www.stenografenverein.de/stenografie/stenografische-sammlung.

They also able to decipher any German stenograms/items of shorthand for you: https://www.stenografenverein.de/stenografie/stenogramme-entschluesseln Website written in German

SHORTHAND TRANSCRIPTION

Shorthand Tracey https://shorthandtracey.co.uk & https://shorthandtranscription.co.uk  Paid Pitman's New Era Shorthand transcription service for those intriguing undeciphered texts or old journals you may have lying around, and also pre-New Era historical shorthand transcription. Tracey Jennings-Harding, based in UK.

Shorthand Translation Services
Translations from Gregg by Ms Letha Sanders in Colorado USA.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/letha-sanders-22591444

See entry above on German Shorthand for translation of items in DEK, Gabelsberger or other German systems.

SHORTHAND ARTICLES

Hold The Front Page
https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk Everything of interest to the would-be journalist, the search box will bring up many articles on shorthand.

Shorthand Sue Teaches Teeline
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwKMKRJZG4M Six informative YouTube videos on Teeline basics, produced for Journalism course at Liverpool John Moores University.

Let's Love Teeline Together
Beginners lessons, exam prep, speed and dictations:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8C-I4BFOz6neY2KrQ_paQA/videos

Lesson 1 is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STTP6olkZ7k

Pitman Training
http://www.pitmanlondon.co.uk/documents/building-to-high-speed.pdf The text is taken from Chapter 30 of the book "Teeline Shorthand" in the Made Simple series by Harry Butler, and gives much good advice and encouragement for writers of any system. (Harry Butler wrote high speed Pitman's as a journalist and teacher of long experience.)

Pitman Training no longer teaches Pitman's Shorthand but instead offers Teeline which is an entirely different system - please check what type of shorthand being offered before paying or committing yourself to any course or materials. Pitman is just the name of the company/franchise now, which may cause confusion for those who are not aware of this.

Pitman Training may be found to occasionally offer Pitman 2000 beginners/refresher or New Era refresher self-paced courses, depending on location, and it would be prudent to find out beforehand whether there is a teacher for these, or just materials and dictations.

Computerised shorthand

Stanislav Sarman has created programmes to convert text into Pitman 2000 or Gregg.
http://steno.tu-clausthal.de/Pitman.php

The Pitman version is not 100% accurate, and therefore should not be used to actually learn the system, as the learner will not know which are the incorrect outlines. Outlines that it cannot produce are displayed as a shorthand question mark.

Text to Pitman2000 conversion A Pitman 2000 writer has created a program to carry out this conversion, and has given permission for a sample to be included here. The text of "Desiderata" is public domain since 1976 and can be found online, but the shorthand sample remains the copyright of the conversion program author.

  Click the thumbnail to get the full 678KB JPG

http://www.intersteno.it/uploads/enews63.pdf A short article in their June 2014 newsletter on "Shorthand against dementia"

DICTATION

See https://www.long-live-pitmans-shorthand-reading.org.uk/blog-downloads.htm for MP3 dictations of all my reading website articles.

Online Stopwatch
https://www.online-stopwatch.com Stopwatch, countdown, metronome, timers.

Incorporated Phonographic Society
https://the-ips.org.uk "The world's oldest society of shorthand writers" This society has been going since 1898 (and since 1872 under an earlier name) and they offer independent speed examinations for both typewriting and shorthand and a quarterly IPS Journal.

BBC Learn English
https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish General interest articles as well as explanations on points of language.

Pitman Training
http://www.pitmanlondon.co.uk/shorthandspeed Page contains many audio tracks downloads at speeds 40 to 130 wpm. There is also a PDF giving excellent and extensive advice on speed training techniques, well worth reading by learners of any system. English male and female voices. (Note this site is not https://)

www.biblegateway.com/resources/audio The Bible in a variety of versions and languages. There is a choice of readers: Dramatized (several voices), George W Sarris, or Max McLean.

www.audio-bible.com The King James Bible in audio for listening online, narrator Stephen Johnston. The website is in large font to aid the visually impaired. I have timed the first chapter of Genesis at 170wpm, which is slow for listening but fast for shorthand writing. At this speed, it may be more useful to prepare the passage and write lightly in pencil over the top of your ink outlines. You can halve the speed by writing every alternate sentence

If using the Bible, then Proverbs is a good chapter to start with, as the sentences are mostly quite short, with more common words, and do not contain unusual vocabulary or names.

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TYPING / DICTATION SOFTWARE

Express Scribe
https://www.nch.com.au/scribe/index.html Transcription software, using footpedal or keyboard commands. It has a variable speed slider, with pitch maintained, from 25% to 225%, although below 50% hearing the words becomes a strain.

Audacity
https://www.audacityteam.org/download  A simple and easy free sound editing program for recording dictations, and edit or change tempo to alter the speed, then output to a variety of file formats such as MP3.

SHORTHAND INTEREST

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Sir_Isaac_Pitman_and_Sons Gives a list of dates of various shorthand systems from 16th century and Pitman historical dates up to present.

Trowbridge Museum
https://trowbridgemuseum.co.uk Information on Sir Isaac Pitman's home town. A similar PDF is available from Trowbridge Town Council

Pay attention to ... what?
Throughout this website I encourage thinking of shorthand while you are out and about, looking at adverts, road and shop signs etc, and taking shorthand study material with you on your Ipod or similar device. The short videos on www.stoptextsstopwrecks.org show very forcefully the dangers of texting while walking or driving.

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