History of Shorthand: A select list of shorthand systems

(Arranged in order of the date of publication.)

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Taylor

Samuel Taylor (b.1748) published his system, “A Universal System of Stenography or Short Hand-writing” in 1786. This was based on the earlier system of John Byrom. Where Byrom gave 2 forms for the letters, B, H, J, W, X, SH and TH, Taylor reduced these to only one form each although retaining 2 forms for W, and giving 3 forms for L. He writes “I invented a new set of characters … previously all ..,. characters hitherto adopted, were improperly chosen”. However, his arbitrary consonant signs required very specific guidance for joining the strokes. All vowels were represented by a dot. He considered Byrom’s placing of the vowel dot in 5 positions as being “too many” and reduces this to one dot standing alone to represent a, i and o. Taylor developed an improved theory of shorthand in terms of the design of the consonant letters and uses the principle of abbreviating words by writing 2-4 of their first consonants (ps = possible). Many words are expressed by the initial consonant only (w = who, d = did, t = time), but an, and, in are all represented by the sign for 'n'.

Bordley

Simon George Bordley published ‘Cadmus Britannicus’ in 1787. This was a script shorthand method to be written in three styles, Slower shorthand, Swifter shorthand, and Shorthand for music. Simple strokes were used to represent letters and vowels were indicated by the slope and position of the consonants.

Bertin

Theodore Bertin adapted Taylor's system into French in 1792 and in turn Josef Danzer, an officer in the Austrian army, adapted the Taylor-Bertin system into German. The shorthand entries in the note-books of the composer Beethoven, which he used after becoming deaf, were written in Danzer's adapted system.

Gabelsberger

Franz Gabelsberger (1789-1849) developed a cursive or script system based on longhand letters - “Speech-sign art”. This system employed both position writing and thickening of strokes. It became widely popular throughout Europe. The consonants are portions of ordinary letters, modifications of geometric forms distorted to suit the position assumed by the hand in writing longhand, and joined by upward strokes as in normal writing. The vowels are indicated by closer or wider spacing between the consonants and using longer or shorter joining strokes, but these are often omitted. There are many prefixes and suffixes and a large number of contractions. Other devices include writing at different levels or curving or thickening the junction strokes.

Pitman

Isaac Pitman (b.1813-1897) published his book ‘Stenographic Sound-Hand’ in 1837; this marked a new era in the development of phonetic shorthand systems. It is one of the most important geometric systems of shorthand, but it had many contemporary critics; Thomas Anderson regarded the system as “one of the most ill-constructed and deficient systems ever invented”. Other critics included Thomas Malone who entered into a long critical debate about the merits of Pitman’s ‘Phonography’ and alternative ‘cursive’ systems.

In the Pitman method all words are written according to their sounds and the consonant alphabet is based on the pattern of a crossed circle and uses paired thick and thin strokes. A thick stroke represents the heavier sound of the similar thin stroke, e.g. D is a thickened T. Pitman's shorthand is a masterpiece of word abbreviation but has a multiplicity of rules, alternatives and exceptions which makes it difficult to learn. A hook precursor sign written in different positions is used to indicate R and L. A final hook may represent N, F or V depending on the preceding letter.

Vowels are indicated by inserting light and heavy dots or dashes as diacritic marks. These are placed in any of three positions before or after a consonant sign according to their sound and where they occur in a word. In addition, word outlines can be written in three positions, above, on or below the line of writing, relating to the sound of the vowel. Advanced writers can then omit most of the diacritic vowel signs and rely on indicating the vowel sounds by the position of the outline.

Pitman himself changed his sign alphabet and published numerous editions of the method (these appeared yearly between 1871 and 1894. The complex system of word abbreviation has been progressively simplified over the years, but the system remains powerful although time-consuming to learn and practise.

In 1970 a modified version was published – ‘Pitmanscript; a method of fast writing based on the English alphabet’. This was a recognition that for general office work writing speeds of up to 80-90 words a minute were adequate. This revision used a mixture of normal longhand letters intermixed with 10 special strokes; these differ from the original Pitman geometric signs (d, h, n, r, s and t). These letters, it is claimed, form 40% of all letters written. The result tended to create somewhat long and cumbersome word outlines. There are some 24 short cuts for the 27 most common words ( m = me, w = we, n = not, y = why). It appears to have been intended to be a personal and individual system.

In 1971 G.A. Reid wrote ‘Pitman Shorterhand’; this is a simplified and modified form of the original Pitman system. The Short Forms (known earlier as ‘Grammalogues’) are now termed as ‘Pitman Pacers’.

The impressive primary collection of the works of Pitman, together with other systems, is held at the University of Bath Library (Pitman collection). See Library collections.

Graham

Andrew J. Graham published ‘Brief Longhand’ in 1857. This was not a shorthand system as such but rather a system of longhand contractions. Frequent words were represented by their initial or significant letter (word signs); a = an, and, c = can, e = the, f = for, r = are, z = as. Many prefixes and suffixes were similarly represented by their initial letters. The method could be written in 3 styles. The Corresponding style where the word signs only were used, all other words being written in full. The Author’s style which had an extended list of word signs and where other words could be abbreviated according to certain fixed principles. In the third style the majority of vowels were omitted in words and silent consonants were omitted. This approach differs from his contemporaries who were concerned to develop shorthand writing based on arbitrary sign alphabets. Graham appears to be developing a set of word abbreviation principles.

Duployé

Emile Duployé (1833-1912) was influenced by several other previous shorthand inventors deriving from Taylor's system. Duployé's system was published in 1868. It is a French phonographic system representing the 28 sounds of the French language. Consonants are paired by sound (P-B, T-D, F-V, K-G) and differentiated by length – an approach later followed by Malone and Gregg. Vowels are represented by small semi- or quarter circles which are not always easily distinguished. Its special merit lies in its simplicity but the method of combining consonant strokes leads to simple ‘flourishes’ which may not be easy to read when written out of context.
The system was taught in Canada and was later adapted into Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Arabic. In 1883 it was claimed to be “the most popular system in the world”. It was first adapted to English by A.J. Pernion (1877) and later by J.M.Sloan. T.S.Malone published his own version, ‘Script Phonography’ in 1886 (see entries below).
Pitman’s comment on the Duployan system was that “ … nothing so puzzling to the reader as a series of sinuosities in which the letters are so anastomosed or blended that it is impossible, according to the old phrase to ‘tell t'other from which’ ”.

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