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replies cannot be undertaken, and contact info should be omitted.
To identify a piece of found shorthand, you can post
a sample on
https://www.reddit.com/r/shorthand/ where members have a very
wide spread of knowledge of different systems.
For transcription services,
see Links
page/Shorthand Transcription
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Guestmap
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Guestmap has a small character limit and a low "map pin"
count. All Guestmap entries since it started in 2009 are
archived in this text file, showing only first name and
country against each comment:
Guestmap Archive TXT
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Guestbook |
Longer entries possible. Book started July 2011.
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Feedback Form |
Please note: Submitting your
completed Feedback Form may be resulting in you getting my
404 page, but despite this your form is being received by me
successfully (May 2023) For
private comments, suggestions, corrections. Nothing is
published and the information is for my eyes only. I will
retain all the information for the ongoing improvement of
this website and the reading website. I am extremely
grateful for corrections and want to know if any outline is
wrong, missing, not matching the text, or not clearly
written, and I will investigate and put it right
immediately.
Answers to any Feedback questions of general shorthand
interest may appear below,
but anonymously.
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You Can Help Form |
For those with longer experience in shorthand writing, if
you have any brief nuggets of wisdom for learners. If
appropriate, I will summarise as necessary and post here
anonymously
below.
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Advice for beginners and learners
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Anything that has worked well when learning or using shorthand
in real life, techniques, attitude, mindset, materials, etc
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Advice to left-handers
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FEEDBACK
CONTRIBUTIONS
Asking
for advice on amount and type of dictations to take daily.
Within your study timetable, give most time to prepared dictations,
and always read them back. Take an unprepared one on the last
session, therefore using all the preceding as warm-up and revision,
as well as realising that an unprepared dictation can be quite
mentally fatiguing. Read it back immediately and next day type it
out, and work on corrections.
Make some time to
record all the exercises and passages in the book, in bulk, so that
when you come to use them, you have forgotten the exact content.
They should be taken firstly as prepared, but after that, go back to
a previous one and use that as your unprepared, the item will appear
fresh and different, merely through having forgotten what was in it.
With home learning, you can’t really replicate an unprepared piece
read by a teacher, but even then the teacher would have gauged the
piece to match what has been covered and learned so far, and the
“re-using” method is the closest you can get to that. At this stage,
avoid taking random stuff on TV internet etc, this will only
discourage, a learner cannot expect to do what a verbatim reporter
does, people talk upwards of 150-200.
Create drill sentence books in advance, they are an
easy way to continue practising without causing fatigue, they
principally train the hand to move correctly and smoothly, and they
redeem otherwise wasted minutes throughout the day.
Shorthand writing
is about knowing ALL the outlines, and it is not an exercise in
getting good and fast at creating or struggling with outlines at
high speed. To this end, work through common word lists, in
frequency order. Make up short sentences or passages using small
chunks of the list, and include derivatives.
Avoid
transliterating from longhand in any form, this encourages
hesitation and slowness, and there are quicker and more targeted
ways to widen one’s outline vocab, for the writer who is aiming to
be able to take down from live speech. Exclude longhand/text as much
as possible from study times, deal only with spoken sounds and the
outlines for them.
Finish the book
before thinking of speed ladder. All those “too easy” exercises can
be used as speed ladder fodder, increasing playback speed, or you
can time yourself reading them out loud many times, getting ever
faster, and recording yourself on the last go. Replace some of the
vocab in them, to vary the content with words you need to practise.
============================
Shorthand reading books My reading website has
a links to the very few books written in New Era that are available
(they are free downloads on archive.org)
https://www.long-live-pitmans-shorthand-reading.org.uk/links.htm
Very occasionally these books come up on Ebay UK as well.
Halving
“trapped, dropped” These words
end in the sound of T = trapt, dropt, therefore the P is being
halved for the T sound, not the D spelling. The spelling must be
ignored. Many online dictionaries have a sound file for each word,
so that you can check the pronunciation:
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com
Starting to Learn
Someone has enquired about what is needed when
starting to learn. Everything you need to know is described in
detail in the blog "Raw Beginners" November 2013, on the reading
website. Rapid Course is as good as New Course, and very usefully
gives a lot of vocabulary in each lesson. Without a teacher, it will
be necessary to record your own practice passages from the book and
key book. Keep your stock of recordings for revision and for the
speed training that comes after theory learning. The only other
necessities are HB pencils and a big pile of good quality notepads,
top spiral bound. Good quality paper is important, even though the
pads will be filled and disposed of rapidly. Acquire a shorthand
dictionary as soon as practicable.
My theory learning at college took one term (3
months), and two terms to work towards various speed exams, finally
achieving 120 wpm. Theory learning need not take 6 months, if you
can give it regular attention.
Light and Dark Strokes
Knowing when to use thick or
thin strokes is a matter of keeping on practising from examples in
the book. Anything that you don’t know will slow you down, whether
it is a thick or thin line, a particular stroke, vowel, hook or
circle, or any new outline. This will keep happening as you work
through the chapters, and everything will be assimilated through the
same process - practising to make it more and more familiar. It is
like moving to a new town, at first it is strange and completely
unknown, but after a while you have the entire map in your head and
can get from anywhere to anywhere else easily, but that only happens
if you “practise” walking round the streets. It is a gradual process
but after a while one can look back at the first lesson and cannot
imagine not knowing it. It is important to move from one lesson to
the next fairly briskly, as everything in it is also practising the
earlier material again. Short breaks away from the desk are also
helpful and are not a waste of time, rather than pushing on for too
long at one time.
Vowels Mnemonics
We are usually taught the vowel mnemonic "that pen is
not much good" and "pa may we all go too". If you wish to vary the
order, see my
Strokes
Reminder List jpg on the Downloads page, which includes the
vowels in 4 x sets of 3 words, which you can rearrange to suit your
needs. The advantage of these sets is that a beginner can actually
write them, as they are simple outlines. Mnemonics are very helpful
at the beginning of learning and they should be built on as soon as
possible by regularly practising groups of short words/outlines all
with the same first vowel. It is important to say the word out loud
as it is written, so sound and outline are matched together in the
memory. This way reliance on the mnemonics is short lived and they
do not become a hindrance in future writing.
Deteriorating writing
Someone has enquired about their shorthand writing
deteriorating over the years. The best way to combat this is to
practise slowing right down, copying out shorthand passages either
from a shorthand book or from any longhand source, if necessary
pretending to yourself that a learner will have to read your notes.
On the first copying out, leave extra blank lines so the pages
become a facility drill (necessary for Pitman 2000, as my facility
drill books are New Era). Make a concerted effort to write smaller
if the shorthand has become sprawling. Use my 40wpm dictations (of
which there is one per month) which for a writer of long standing
should be very easy and present no difficulty in writing neat and
careful outlines, and with no chance of rushing ahead and losing the
neatness. Once the habit of more careful outline formation has been
re-established, as in the first learning days, then this should
carry over when returning to the normal faster writing. The
shorthand for the websites is produced at snail's pace, as it has to
be textbook neat, and it does take effort to slow down, against
one's former training.
YOU CAN HELP -
CONTRIBUTIONS:
Use Shorthand Daily
Some advice from K from S.Australia. Kind compliments
accepted, and I would add this is equally beneficial for novices, it
is important to use the shorthand for real life items, starting with
home activities:
"Write your own daily blog, include weather report, bible verse or
quote of the day, short news item and daily intentions, and include
daily word list. Along with Beryl’s fabulous website, this will keep
your shorthand interesting and real. I do this at 6am in the
morning, Monday to Friday, in bed with a coffee! Whilst I am no
longer employed as a stenographer it keeps my brain activated, and
it is my craft."
Court Reporting
Advice from a Court Reporter
(Pitman's New Era):
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Expect to have to write at over 200wpm in a court setting.
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Shorthand is a skill which has to be carefully studied in order
to acquire the necessary facility and speed. The time you put in
studying the principles of the system will be reflected and
repaid over a lifetime of use.
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Aim for perfection and 'drill' unfamiliar outlines.
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Learn to 'think in shorthand' envisioning the shorthand outlines
as you hear them spoken and, if necessary, working them out when
you encounter unfamiliar words. This can be done at any time -
even when listening to your friends chatting on the phone.
Page turning
While still writing at the top
of the page, use the other hand to lift one of the bottom corners of
the notepad page, ready to turn it over quickly, so no time is lost.
Left handers
Draw the margin on the right
hand side of the notepad page instead of the left side, to reduce
the travel of the left hand.
If using a spine bound notebook,
use it from back to front, with the spine on the right, out of the
way of your left hand.
Thank you so much for taking the time to comment.
I appreciate your remarks and they are an encouragement to other
writers and learners!
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