History of Shorthand: A select list of shorthand systems

(Arranged in order of the date of publication.)

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Kingsford

Percy Edward Kingsford published ‘The New Phonography’ in 1888. This is known as the Oxford system. It is a complex shorthand system using joined vowels and based on normal longhand writing. The core letters, B, T, D, M, R, are allocated signs derived from their longhand equivalents. The 5 vowel signs are included in the word outline. A vowel-place-indication method is used where an initial vowel is indicated by the placement of the following consonant. Two similar letters, e.g. T + T, are blended into a single double-size stroke. Thus letters may be ‘dwarfed’ (shortened) or lengthened with economy of movement. The sound of R is indicated by thickening a consonant and the sound of L is indicated by thickening a vowel sign.

Callendar

H.L. Callendar published ‘Orthic Shorthand (Orthographic cursive)’ in 1891. This was known as the Cambridge system, as distinct from Kingsford’s ‘Oxford’ system. It is a light-line method – no thickening of strokes. based on spelling using 26 cursive symbols for letters with forward-moving strokes for vowels. Double letters, consonants or vowels, are indicated by placing a dot beneath the letter. The similar letters, L and S (both represented by a small circle) are distinguished by writing them in different directions (clock-wise or counter clock-wise). It was claimed to be easy to learn and to write but it was not fast enough for verbatim reporting speeds.

White

Frederic William White published his ‘Briefhand or orthographic shorthand’; an abbreviated system of writing words as spelt, in 1903. This is a very slight publication of only eight pages with hand-written plates. The consonant alphabet is formed from parts of the familiar Roman alphabet, but these are very arbitrary selections and not easily recognizable. The vowels include circles, straight and sloping lines, hooks and dots.

Clarke

Edward George Clarke published his ‘Swifthand’ in 1909. This has an esoteric alphabet with different forms for up and for downward signs and these require clear distinction in the proportions of the letter signs. [It might be argued that writing familiar Roman letters would be faster than using this special alphabet.]

Blackburn

’Blackburn’s print shorthand’, published in 1912, is a complex method of writing requiring a pre-printed page containing multiple blocks of letters. Words are indicated by marking the blocks. These marks include 4 forward and 4 backward written curves with additional marks to indicate a Prefix, a Syllable, an Affix, and abbreviated word, a phrase of an abbreviation of 3 letters.

Dutton

Reginald John Garfield Dutton (b. 1886) published his "Dutton's Shorthand" in 1916. This system is built on the principle of "look after R's and L's, T's and D's, S's and N's, and the other letters will look after themselves". A phonetic approach is adopted together with an arbitrary sign alphabet and position writing. This results in a compact method of writing. A double-size letter written on the line indicates a following R, but when written through or below the line indicates a following sound of L. It was advertised widely as 'Dutton's 24-hour Shorthand' claiming it could be learned in that time period. Dutton also invented 'Speedwords', an alternative international language. Each word is built up from 488 'parent' Speedwords mostly of 1-3 letters using either a single-letter suffix to change the meaning, or by idea-compounds where two Speedwords are combined to form a new self-explanatory word.( lo = long, but lox = short, sa = knowledge, but sax = ignorance; ca = room, dor = sleep, cador = bedroom).

Webster

William O. Webster published ‘Speedography’ in 1919. This was a phonetic system with arbitrary geometric signs; these are paired, T and D, R and L, N and M, K and G, F and V, P and B. The paired consonants, SH and Ch are different sloping curves, J is a larger curve. The joined vowel method uses circles, hooks and combinations for the diphthongs. This system was clearly influenced by Gregg shorthand.

Sessions

Leonard Sessions published his ‘Sonoscript or Soundhand’ in 1921. His alphabet, which he called “The Soniture” consists of three groups of letters. The first group, the Sonants, are written forwards with light and heavy strokes. The second group, the Consonants, are similarly written downwards. The third group, the Resonants, are the lighter sounds of ‘th, s, l, m, n and ng’. This appears to be a somewhat esoteric system of special interest to linguists.

Dewey

Godfrey Dewey made significant contributions to the development of shorthand. He was particularly interested, as was Isaac Pitman, in simplified spelling. He published his first shorthand manual, ‘Personal Shorthand’, in the U.S.A. in 1927. This was a phonetic system using single stroke letters with some pairing and distinguishing consonants with thick and thin strokes. It was a joined vowel system but unessential vowels were omitted in the body of a word. There was a very small set, less than 50, of special word signs where single letters represented the most frequently occurring words. This textbook was re-published in 1938 with the title, ‘Script Shorthand’.

Dearborn

Emma B. Dearborn developed the system of "Speedwriting, or Natural Shorthand" (1923) while revising the manual for the Stenotype shorthand machine. In 1942 it was changed to be written by hand with pen or pencil. This is a script, or alphabetic system. Every letter of the Roman alphabet represents its own sound but certain letters have a second use to represent particular groups or families of syllables. A final vowel letter may indicate a range of word endings. In addition some half-dozen punctuation signs are used to indicate specific syllables or word endings.

Oliver

George A.S. Oliver published ‘Stenoscript; a simple and legible system of shorthand based on the model of ordinary handwriting’, in 1930. This was a phonetic system with a very technical approach to the representation of sounds. The short sound consonants are a smaller size than the long sound consonants and all involve a downward stroke. Loops, circles and hooks are added to the down stroke to differentiate the letters. The loops may be dropped at the beginning or end of words. M and N are given horizontal curves.

Graham

Andrew Graham’s system ‘Brief Longhand’, originally published in 1857, was the basis for Hy-Speed Longhand, an American method published in 1932. This followed the general practice of omitting silent letters and most vowels and using numbers or signs and combinations to indicate specific syllables.

Coover

'The Note-script manual' was published in 1936 by J.E. Coover of Stanford University, U.S.A. The author’s premise is that “substantial brevity in the writing of English cannot be obtained without abbreviating the letters”. This is a very technical approach based on an esoteric design of letters and brevity in writing them. The resultant words are quite unfamiliar and the 'phonetic' base of the method echoes the earlier systems of Pitman and Gregg.

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