Shorthand!

[JoeWras]

So I volunteered to go through some old files at the non-profit.

Got to the file marked "1974 Minutes". Cool, these should be good.

Open up the folder, and it is all in shorthand. THE shorthand. The one most us can't read.



Now I know how the kids feel when the run into cursive.

Anyone ever do shorthand?

 

[braumeister]

Open up the folder, and it is all in shorthand. THE shorthand. The one most us can't read.

Gregg or Pittman? I had to learn both in high school.

 

[Aerides]

Gregg or Pittman? I had to learn both in high school.

My mum learned Gregg in the 70's. I decided to self-teach from her books and notes (was around 8 at the time?) But I didn't keep it up and for sure could not read it today.

 

[Gumby]

The last person I knew who could do shorthand was my first secretary at the law firm, back in the 90s. She was about 15 years older than me.

 

[badatmath]

My mother did it. It seemed pretty uptown for her to know it and get a job as her mother and sister never held jobs outside the home.

 

[Sunset]

Maybe google translate can read it ?

 

[athena53]

A former coworker who's probably about 90 now learned it in the military. It was fascinating to watch him take notes. The secretaries who knew shorthand said they couldn't read it but then I guess everyone's style develops over the years.

 

[braumeister]

Gregg was tricky for me, but I picked up Pitman pretty easily. Used it for note taking in high school, and a little bit in college, but never again.

 

[JoeWras]

I didn't even know there were different methods. Wow.

I'm not in the office right now, when I get back there, I'll try to feed it through google translate and see what happens.

 

[NW-Bound]

I remember when I was pre-teen (early 60s), I heard of my mother taking shorthand classes.

However, I don't think she got a chance to use it much or was very proficient at it.

 

[iloveyoga]

I took it in high school for quite a few years, we liked the teacher. I don't remember any of it.

 

[OldShooter]

I took a "notehand" class in HS. It was based on shorthand and oriented towards college note-taking. Never used it.

 

[gamboolman]

My mother was an executive Secretary and took shorthand notes.
As a young kid, I remember her showing me her note pad in the 1960's.
I tried to learn it when I got a little older - but No Joy as it was too hard for me.

 

[braumeister]

At the rate things are going, it won't be long until longhand (cursive) is as unrecognizable as shorthand is today.

 

[Walt34]

My mother was a secretary for a number of years and could write in shorthand. Gregg, I think. It looked like gobbledygook to me.

I thought it might be interesting to learn for taking notes in college, but I later decided that was more work than it was worth. Scribbles in longhand worked well enough for me as long as I could read them.

 

[athena53]

My mother was a secretary for a number of years and could write in shorthand. Gregg, I think. It looked like gobbledygook to me.

I thought it might be interesting to learn for taking notes in college, but I later decided that was more work than it was worth. Scribbles in longhand worked well enough for me as long as I could read them.

I had my mother's shorthand book and tried to learn it but wasn't very disciplined so it never stayed with me. As a budding feminist, I figured I wouldn't need it in my career and I was right.

Later I had a secretary who used something called Speedwriting. It kind of made sense- English but you left out most of the vowels and words such as article adjectives that she should have been able to figure out from the context but never could so the drafts always had mistakes. I use something similar when I have to take notes (which I do a lot because it helps me stay focused).

And in the rare cases when I don't want to someone sitting nearby to read what I'm writing I take notes in French but use the Cyrillic alphabet.

 

[Calico]

At the rate things are going, it won't be long until longhand (cursive) is as unrecognizable as shorthand is today.

Cursive can be quite handy!

https://www.tiktok.com/@drybarcomedy/video/7241281933840370986

 

[JoeWras]

Heard a business consultant today discussing phone skills. Basically she was saying if you want to work from home, you have to learn to use a phone.

She's serious. The issue is that so much communication in the youngest crowd is by chat and text, so they simply don't have basic talking phone skills.

 

[marko]

Mom made me take shorthand as a summer course. Her thinking was that as I was entering college, it would be better for taking class lecture notes.

She also had me take typing...back in 1969 she said "some day people are going to talk to these big computers on a typewriter...you should know how to do that." I suppose the idea was also that I could then type my own papers, transcribed from my shorthand notes myself, instead of paying some young lady to do it (c'mon, it was the 60s, that's how it was done).

 

[Amethyst]

I took Gregg shorthand in college, and was extremely good at it. I used it for taking notes while interviewing people for the school paper.

I also used it in my diary when I wanted to write something that seemed particularly sensitive. Now I can't read it back

So I volunteered to go through some old files at the non-profit.

Got to the file marked "1974 Minutes". Cool, these should be good.

Open up the folder, and it is all in shorthand. THE shorthand. The one most us can't read.



Now I know how the kids feel when the run into cursive.

Anyone ever do shorthand?

 

[Gumby]

I also used it in my diary when I wanted to write something that seemed particularly sensitive. Now I can't read it back

Probably a good thing. Sometimes, the ability to forget the past is a blessing.

 

[Momcpa]

I took shorthand as a high school course. I really liked it. All of us "girls" enjoyed the class, partly because we could write things fast, could write what others couldn't decipher, and of course, because the teacher was pretty, and cool, and fashionable, and made us feel good as young women. (she was later asked to leave the school district as she was having an affair with the married football coach !!! )

 

[street]

I haven't used it, but my wife did and was really good at it. She SH for court reporting when they needed a fill in. She said she couldn't do it today though. Don't use it you lose it.

 

[latexman]

DW got an AS in Executive Secretarial Science in 1977. Her shorthand skills were better than my English skills. I bet she can still do it.

 

[mattbaxx]

My mom learned Gregg long ago and taught it in high school in the 1970s. She often used it around the house for her own note taking. I never could make head nor tails of it. In recent years she used it on the outside of boxes in her garage to identify the contents so thieves wouldn't know what was inside... because, you know, lids are difficult.

This year she was taking minutes for the Residents Council meetings at her assisted living place in shorthand. She took great pleasure in the shock and awe of both residents and caregivers.