History of Shorthand: A select list of shorthand systems

(Arranged in order of the date of publication.)

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Thomas

Charles A. Clarke published ‘Thomas’ Natural shorthand’ in the U.S.A. in 1937. The consonants are shortened versions of longhand letters although these are not all easily recognizable. The vowel sounds are expressed by placing the base of the initial consonant in one of three positions, upper, middle and low, but initial and final vowels are joined to the consonant. The medial vowels are all indicated by a short line written upwards. The design of this method is focused on the precision of the letter sounds.

Fishwick

Fishwick’s ‘Fastclear shorthand’ was published in 1945. It is a geometric based system using diacritic vowel indicators written with position writing not unlike the Pitman method. It was claimed to be a simple shorthand system but in fact it seems quite complex to learn and to write.

Tabor

Roy Tabor devised ‘Troab Shorthand’ in 1946 and the system was published as a correspondence course in 1951. This was a script system using ordinary longhand letters but with some simplified characters. Later it was developed into the present system which can be written at two levels, Alpha-script and T-Script Professional, together with the Keyboard version. These levels are designed to meet the varying needs of users based on their frequency of writing shorthand. At T-Script Professional level the normal longhand letters are all written in contracted forms of the familiar Roman alphabet letters. These are quicker to write and easily read. Punctuation signs are not used for abbreviation purposes. Alpha script level is the general user level, the 'alphabetic' version where the writer's own familiar longhand letters are used and the Keyboard version is devised to be typed on a QWERTY keyboard.
(Return to the Home Page of this site to explore this system further or go the quick Overview of the system.)

Dacomb

The co-authors B.E. and C.T. Dacomb published ‘Dacomb shorthand’ in Australia in 1948. This is a phonetic based system with geometric consonant alphabet. The latter are arbitrary lines and curves without pairing of similar sounds. Vowels are represented by straight ticks, circles and hooks; these are joined to initial and final consonant strokes. Word abbreviation follows 4 basic sets of rules. 1. Ledding, or thickening, to add L, 2. Knotting, a thin loop, to add N, 3. Doubling (except H) to add T or D, and 4. Reducing, writing half-size – except H – to add R. A dot represents ‘and’, but inside a circle it adds S, and beside a stroke it represents ‘-ng’. A short dash struck through a consonant represents the ‘-tion’ syllable, but is also used as a Z indicator and to represent NG and NK. A hook represents the combination RT or RD.

Fagan

H.A. Fagan published ‘Shorthand, a new system’, in 1950 in South Africa. This was an attempt to simplify shorthand writing using cursive letters and joined vowels. Some letters are thickened and there is some position writing. Words and phrases are abbreviated to only what is required to make them recognizable in the context of a sentence. There is very useful advice included on shorthand writing and reporting. An excellent introductory chapter traces the history of shorthand from the early Greeks and the Roman Tiro, through the great British shorthand authors to Pitman and Dutton.

Vasallo

E.V. Vasallo published his ‘New Facile system of shorthand’ in Egypt in 1950. There is an arbitrary alphabet, T and D are horizontal straight lines distinguished by length. The paired consonants are distinguished by writing them on or through the line. There are 4 forms for the letter S and 2 for Z. The vowels ‘Ah, Oh, Ooh’ are written as 3 sizes of circle, and ‘Eh, Ay, Ih (‘ee’)’ are represented by a short upward stroke, differentiated by adding a dot or by thickening. The short U is a short downward diacritic mark.

Joyce

Timothey Joyce published ‘Facilography or Easy shorthand’, in 1950. It is a phonetic system using geometric signs for consonants. The vowels are indicated by diacritic marks together with position writing of the word outline to indicate the first vowel sound.

Williams

L.M. Williams, Director of the School of Speedhand, issued the ‘Speedhand Manual’ for self-tuition learning in 1952. A set of general principles enables the abbreviation of every word in the English language. It is essentially phonetic and uses ordinary longhand letters but on average, words in Speedhand consist of only two letters each.

Du Cann

C.G.L. Du Cann published ‘Self Shorthand’ in 1953. This was a method recommending that the writer should create his own shorthand system. This would be based on the individual’s use of professional (or ‘jargon’) terms with a slant towards legal terminology. He advocates a personal vocabulary, abbreviating words by using initials and shortened spelling, e.g. “cigarette” becomes ‘cigaret’, and “could” is written as ‘cd’. There is much use of two-size letters to indicate abbreviated words, “jurisprudence” is written as ‘Jce’. Frequently occurring keywords can be specially shortened, “The Government” is written as ‘G+’. Vowels are omitted, as are non-essential words, as much as possible. He advocates the use of graphic symbols to which the individual writer will give arbitrary meanings; a personal ‘authority list’ is recommended to be created. It is also recommended that longhand letters should be written in simplified forms. This small book contains a list of the 1,000 most frequently occurring words in English.

Forkner

Hamden Forkner published the ‘Forkner Alphabet shorthand’ in the U.S.A. in 1952 after ten years of research. The system uses a combination of conventional letters and a few symbols for letters or sounds that are difficult to write. ‘H’ is represented by a short dash written above the line; when written through the letter C it represents CH, and similarly with S to represent SH and with T to represent TH. A number of commonly occurring words are given special abbreviations.

Hill

James Hill was the author of ‘Teeline’. This is described as a symbol system of shorthand where the symbols are stream-lined versions of ordinary longhand letters. Teeline follows ordinary spelling, that is, it is an orthographic system of shorthand. The two basic principles of the system are; 1. The omission of unnecessary letters from words, 2. The elimination of unnecessary movements in forming hand-written characters.

Originally named ‘Boscript’ (named after the author’s wife), Teeline was developed as a shorthand method in 1966 and published in 1968. Its design was the author’s way to apply work study principles to hand-writing. The orthographic approach, based on the way words are spelled, is not consistent as some words are written phonetically, e.g. ‘rough’ and ‘cough’.

Early experimental courses held in 1968 demonstrated the ease of learning of the method and students achieved writing speeds of up to 70 words a minute after only a relatively few hours of study. This contrasted with the much longer tuition time needed for the older geometric shorthand systems.

The system is based on an alphabet where the ‘signs’ are modified from normal hand-writing. T and D are exceptions; both are represented by the same short horizontal stroke. These are differentiated by writing the T stroke above the line and the D stroke on the line. This relationship is kept throughout. Some letters require two pen movements to complete, B, F, K, Q, V, X and Y, as do the double consonant combinations TH, CV and SH.

Vowels are given special signs, some vowels are also given different ‘indicator’ forms. A, E and I are written with two pen movements, but these may also be reduced to single-stroke vowel ‘indicators’. However, most vowels are omitted in the body of a word and the word outline is written using the principal consonants. Students find their shorthand notes easy to read back.

Although good writing speeds have been attained (120-150 words a minute), the system can be somewhat slower to write when compared with experienced writers of some of the older geometric shorthand systems. A Teeline writer has described the system as being “notoriously slow to write”.

Landmark abc

The ‘Landmark abc system of shorthand’ was published in 1973 by ITT Educational Services, Inc. U.S.A.. The system is phonographic and uses the ordinary letters of the alphabet together with selected punctuation marks to represent sounds. M and W are written in simplified forms and 'precursory indicators' may be used to indicate L and R (A 'precursory indicator' is a sign written in front of one letter to express a following letter.)

An extended list of shorthand authors and their systems, is available for research purposes from the publishers. (Some 500 systems are listed.)

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