Talk:Shorthand
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Writing systems, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to writing systems on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project’s talk page. |
| B | This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project’s quality scale. |
| Top | This article has been rated as top-importance on the Project’s importance scale. |
Contents |
[edit] Origins
I came to this page from Peter Bales. How come there is no mention of him here? I hasten to add that I have no knowledge of the subject of shorthand. Jigsawpuzzleman 20:57, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Chinese shorthand or calligraphy?
Is this shorthand or calligraphy? I asked because here the subject is treated as cursive style. When does it stop cursive calligraphy and becomes stenography? Any clear definitions? Gun Powder Ma 22:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
In imperial China, clerks used an abbreviated, highly cursive form of characters to record court proceedings and criminal confessions. These records were used to create more formal transcripts. One cornerstone of imperial court proceedings was that all confessions had to be acknowledged by the accused's signature, personal seal, or thumbprint, requiring fast writing. Versions of this technique survived in clerical professions into the 20th century C.E.
[edit] What is the most popular shorthand in U.S.?
The most popular pen shorthand in the United States is Gregg Shorthand. However, its use has declined in recent years. Most court reporters use the Stenotype machine and offices bypass the entire need for shorthand by using either voice recorders or by typing memoranda personally. Shorthand is no longer taught in the overwhelming majority of schools. It is, however, a very handy skill, and it is perfectly learnable over the Internet. —Andrew
[edit] writing speed
How fast is shorthand compared to "ordinary" cursive? See Talk:Touch typing. --DavidCary 05:22, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
- Having only a book on the history of stenography at hand, I don't have any numbers. A trained stenograph, however, is able to transcribe natural speech, which is impossible with Latin alphabet "ordinary" cursive. -- j. 'mach' wust | ‽ 08:12, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
- But there's that wikipedia to look it up: The German article Stenographie says that 360 syllables per minute are expected from stenographers to be able to hold pace with natural speech (television news are said to have about 250 syllables per minute), and parlamentary stenographers are reported to achieve up to 450 syllables per minute. These numbers refer to the German language, of course, but since English and German are closely related and both have complex phonotactics, I expect correspondent numbers for English should not be too different.
- The site of the Stenografenverein Berlin says that with normal Latin script you can achieve about 40 syllables per minute and with plain stenography (without additional abbreviations) about 120. -- j. 'mach' wust | ‽ 08:56, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
I am a linguist with a reasonable knowledge of phonetics and none of stenography and I find this page hard to read. It would be nice to see a clearer demonstration of a sentence written in ordinary orthography and then one or two possible stenographic variants next to it, to compare - they way it is done on the stenotype page. Another thing: I can not make sense of this sentence under "commonly used English shorthand systems": "The system is phonetic as it is the word sounds that are written rather than the letters". Does this mean that it is closer to phonetic script than to orthography? "sound" and "letter" are too imprecise here, since a letter is, generally speaking, a representation of a sound. I don`t want to change it, since I may have misunderstood - can somebody help? Grape, 16 July 2006
[edit] Popularity
This sentence:
- '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 United States) by a method developed by John Robert Gregg in 1888.'
Seems verifiably false to me. It basically says Gregg replaced Pitman, which is more like wishful thinking 'cos facts indicate that Gregg is all but dead and Pitman is still being taught all around the world (UK, Commonwealth, India, etc), and is still in print publication, and also is coming up to 200 years of use. Pitman also holds the current shorthand speed record (at 350wpm). I can't find any current formal Gregg trainings and the books stopped being published shortly after the system was 100 years old (was that over a decade ago?).
So overall, I think it would good if the article lent a little less towards Gregg and a little more towards Pitman as a system. It would be good if someone rewrote the article to reflect this, and not confuse readers into believing Gregg is more alive than it actually is. Even though Gregg might still be more popular in the US than any other system, Wikipedia is meant to be an International Encyclopedia isn't it? 58.179.171.12 06:30, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Help transcribing shorthand
Hello,
I am currently trying to have a diary entry written in shorthand translated to standard English for some research I'm doing concerning a wikipedia article. Is there anyone out there who might be able to help out with this matter? You can contact me on my talk page. Many thanks. Goatboy95 20:34, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
