Its popularity grew through the 1980s as those who needed shorthand every day (such as secretaries) began to favor the easier learning curve of alphabetic systems to the more difficult (but potentially faster) symbol-based ones.
Forkner is written with a handful of special symbols mixed with simplified versions of cursive longhand letters.
Instead of using only ordinary cursive forms, the vowels a/o/u and short i are reduced to dots and apostrophe-like strokes and ticks, mostly written after the body of word has been made.
Forkner's symbol for a might express any of the sounds represented by a in English words such as cat, father, ago, day.
Forkner makes use of several standard shorthand features to gain additional speed: brief forms, common abbreviations, and phrasing.
[9][10][11] Dr. Forkner was a professor of business education at Columbia University when he began designing and testing his shorthand system.
[13] From that starting point, Forkner gradually spread through high schools and universities in Canada and the US, competing with other shorthand systems.
The publication of Forkner-related books concluded in 1991 when Nelson Canada printed the final run of the Forkner Shorthand Dictionary.