Gregg Shorthand

Gregg Shorthand is a form of shorthand that was invented by John Robert Gregg in 1888. Several editions have been made of this system: Pre-Anniversary, the form created in 1888; Anniversary, a greatly revised but still somewhat difficult form created in 1929; Simplified, a version created in 1949 in which the memory load was greatly reduced, but the speed did not suffer; Diamond Jubilee, published in 1963; Series 90, published in 1978 which brought extensive simplifications but at great detriment to speed; and Centennial, published in 1988. Centennial is the current version.

Gregg shorthand is the most popular form of stenography in the United States. With the invention of dictation machines and the poor results achieved by students of the Series 90 version, however, the use of shorthand gradually declined in the business world.

Another shorthand system, Pitman shorthand, uses line thickness to discriminate between two similar sounds, but Gregg shorthand uses the same thickness throughout and discriminates between similar sounds by the length of the stroke. Gregg shorthand has also been released for several other languages. John Robert Gregg was originally a teacher of a Duployé shorthand adaptation to English (Duployé shorthand is the dominant system in France, and also featured uniform thickness and attached vowels). However, he found the angular outlines of Duployé-based systems to be detrimental to speed; Gregg shorthand features cursive strokes which can be naturally blended without sharp angles. In addition, because the symbols of Gregg shorthand are developped especially for English rather than adapted from a French system, they are a better fit for the language (for example, Gregg has a symbol for th whereas the Duployean systems would use a dotted t--which takes longer to write).

Contents

1 Writing 2 See also 3 Suggested Literature 4 External links

Writing

Gregg Shorthand is a phonetic writing system, which means it records the sounds of the speaker, not the English spelling. It uses the f stroke for the f sound in funnel, telephone, and laugh. All silent letters are omitted. The image on the right shows the strokes of Gregg Shorthand Simplified. The sounds are represented by the International Phonetic Alphabet. The system is written from left to right and the letters are joined. Sh (and zh), Ch, and J (or Dzh) are written downward, while t and d are written upward. X is expressed by putting a slight backward slant on the s, though the word beginning ex is just written es. W, when in the middle of a word, is notated with a short dash under the next vowel. Therefore, the letter Q is usually a k with a dash underneath the next vowel. If z need be distinguished from s, a small tick drawn at a right angle from the s may be written to make this distinction.

Many of the letters shown are also what are called "brief forms". For instance, instead of writing wech for "which", the Gregg stenographer just writes ch. These brief forms are shown on the image to the right. There are several others not shown, however. For instance, "please" is written simply pl, and "govern" is gv. These brief forms make Gregg shorthand much faster.

Another mechanism for increasing the speed of shorthand is phrasing. Based on the calculation that lifting the pen between words has a speed cost equivalent to one stroke, phrasing is the combination of several smaller distinct forms into one outline, for example "it may be that the" could be written in one outline, "(tm)ab(th)a(th)". "I have not been able" would be written, "avnba" (note that to the eye of the reader this phrase written in shorthand looks like "Ihavenotbeenable", and so phrasing is far more legible than a longhand explanation of the principle may lead one to believe).

The vowels in Gregg shorthand are divided into three main groups that very rarely require further notation. The a is a large circle, and can stand for the a in apple, father, and ache. The e is a small circle, and can stand for the e in feed and help, the i in trim and marine, and the obscure vowel in her and learn. The ī represents the i in fine. The o is a small hook that represents the al in talk, the o in cone, jot, and order. The u is a tiny hook that expresses the three vowel sounds heard in the words who, up, and foot. It also expresses a w at the beginning of a word.

There are special vowel markings for certain diphthongs. The ow in how is just an a circle followed by an u hook. The io in lion is written with a small circle inside a large circle. The ia in piano and repudiate is notated as a large circle with a dot in its center (if ea need be distinguished, it is notated with a small vertical line inside the circle instead of the dot). The u in united is notated with a small circle followed by an u hook above it.

Due to the very simple alphabet, Gregg shorthand is very fast in writing. It takes a great deal of practice, however, to master it. Speeds of 270 WPM have been reached with this simple system before, and those notes are still very legible to anyone else (unlike Pitman).

See also

Shorthand, court reporter, Pitman Shorthand, stenomask, stenotype, transcript

Suggested Literature

• John Robert Gregg, Louis A. Leslie, and Charles E. Zoubek. Gregg Shorthand Manual Simplified: Second Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1955. (ISBN 0070245487)
• John Robert Gregg, Louis A. Leslie, and Charles E. Zoubek. Gregg Shorthand Dictionary Simplified: A Dictionary of 30,000 Authoritative Gregg Shorthand Outlines. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1949. (ISBN 0070245452)

External links

• Gregg Shorthand MSN Group (http://groups.msn.com/GreggShorthand)
• Shorthand Shorthand Shorthand (http://www.geocities.com/shorthandshorthandshorthand/)
• Luke Terheyden's invention of left-handed shorthand (http://www.werelight.com/shorthand/index.htm)
• Omniglot's entry on shorthand (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/shorthand.htm)
• The National Court Reporters Association (http://www.ncraonline.org/)
• Reference site that has full Anniversary manual in PDF (http://gregg.angelfishy.net/)
• Ms. Letha's Diamond Jubilee Class (http://www.shorthandclasses.com/)
• StenoSpeed.com, contains dictation sound files (http://www.stenospeed.com/)fr:John_Robert_Gregg