Shorthand
Many journalists use shorthand writing to quickly take notes at press conferences or other similar scenarios.
In the computerized world, several autocomplete programs, standalone or integrated in text editors, based on word lists, also include a shorthand function for frequently used phrases.
Shorthand notes were typically temporary, intended either for immediate use or for later typing, data entry, or (mainly historically) transcription to longhand.
[2] The earliest known indication of shorthand systems is from the Parthenon in Ancient Greece, where a mid-4th century BC inscribed marble slab was found.
The oldest datable reference is a contract from Middle Egypt, stating that Oxyrhynchos gives the "semeiographer" Apollonios for two years to be taught shorthand writing.
Plutarch (c. 46 – c. 120 AD) in his "Life of Cato the Younger" (95–46 BC) records that Cicero, during a trial of some insurrectionists in the senate, employed several expert rapid writers, whom he had taught to make figures comprising numerous words in a few short strokes, to preserve Cato's speech on this occasion.
After the decline of the Roman Empire, the Tironian notes were no longer used to transcribe speeches, though they were still known and taught, particularly during the Carolingian Renaissance.
[citation needed] In imperial China, clerks used an abbreviated, highly cursive form of Chinese characters to record court proceedings and criminal confessions.
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.
In 1588, Timothy Bright published his Characterie; An Arte of Shorte, Swifte and Secrete Writing by Character which introduced a system with 500 arbitrary symbols each representing one word.
Shelton's system became very popular and is well known because it was used by Samuel Pepys for his diary and for many of his official papers, such as his letter copy books.
Shelton's chief rivals were Theophilus Metcalfe's Stenography or Short Writing (1633) which was in its "55th edition" by 1721, and Jeremiah Rich's system of 1654, which was published under various titles including The penns dexterity compleated (1669).
Rich's system was used by George Treby chairman of the House of Commons Committee of Secrecy investigating the Popish Plot.
One of the reasons this system allows fast transcription is that vowel sounds are optional when only consonants are needed to determine a word.
Isaac's brother Benn Pitman, who lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, was responsible for introducing the method to America.
The record for fast writing with Pitman shorthand is 350 wpm during a two-minute test by Nathan Behrin in 1922.
In 1854 he published a short-lived (only 9 issues) phonotypy journal called The Cosmotype, subtitled "devoted to that which will entertain usefully, instruct, and improve humanity",[14][15] and several other monographs about phonography.
[16] In 1857 he published his own Pitman-like "Graham's Brief Longhand" that saw wide adoption in the United States in the late 19th century.
[23] Several systems incorporate a loop into many of the strokes, giving the appearance of Gregg, Graham, or Cross's Eclectic shorthand without actually functioning like them.
[24] The Kotani (aka Same-Vowel-Same-Direction or SVSD or V-type)[25] system's strokes frequently cross over each other and in so doing form loops.
[26] Japanese also has its own variously cursive form of writing kanji characters, the most extremely simplified of which is known as Sōsho.
Prior to the Meiji era, Japanese did not have its own shorthand (the kanji did have their own abbreviated forms borrowed alongside them from China).
Furigana are written alongside kanji, or Chinese characters, to indicate their pronunciation especially in juvenile publications.
The ready availability of the stories in book form, and higher rates of literacy (which the very industry of sokkibon may have helped create, due to these being oral classics that were already known to most people) may also have helped kill the yose theater, as people no longer needed to see the stories performed in person to enjoy them.
Sokkibon also allowed a whole host of what had previously been mostly oral rhetorical and narrative techniques into writing, such as imitation of dialect in conversations (which can be found back in older gensaku literature; but gensaku literature used conventional written language in between conversations, however).
Examples include Pitman shorthand, Boyd's syllabic shorthand, Samuel Taylor's Universal Stenography, the French Prévost-Delaunay, and the Duployé system, adapted to write the Kamloops Wawa (used for Chinook Jargon) writing system.
The semi-script philosophy gained popularity in Italy in the first half of the 20th century with three different systems created by Giovanni Vincenzo Cima, Erminio Meschini, and Stenital Mosciaro.
In Nigeria, shorthand is still taught in higher institutions of learning, especially for students studying Office Technology Management and Business Education[needs update].
