Books, stories, etc written in Gregg…

One of the few disappointments of writting in shorthand is the lack of reading material. If you don’t care to reread your old History 101 notes or transcription practices, there aren’t too many options. Either way, I was just wondering what stories or books anybody’s seen out there written in Gregg.

So far I’ve found:
Alice In Wonderland
A Christmas Carol
The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow
Anyways, just curious!
./[psetus]

(by psetus for everyone)


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  1. Hello, Curious!    The stories you speak of are all written in the Pre-Anniversary and Anniversary versions.  A little more difficult to read than the more modern versions of Gregg Shorthand.    A few more stories I've seen are:  A Man Without A Country, Rip Van Winkle, The Diamond Necklace, Creeds of Great Business Men and Letters from a Merchant to His Son.   I have been writing children's short stories in Diamond Jubilee shorthand as extra reading material for the "Pilot Team" students.  I think it will be fun.  I'd would also like to have these short stories as part of a "Reading Room" for an online class.  Hope I can get it going some day.  If I come across any other stories in shorthand, I will post them.   Ms. Letha 

  2. Found some more…  All of AESOP's Fables were written in shorthand also.  I think I'll borrow some of these short sayings for the "transcription exercises" at the end of each lesson for the "Pilot" team group.   Kel-Kel, in a short while, you shall have your little shorthand storybook.   Bye.  🙂     

  3. I'm curious how they managed to write the many homophone puns in Alice in Wonderland (e.g. tail/tale, not/knot, axis/axes) and if the strange wordplay is confusing in it.

    Who's the publisher for the shorthand version?

  4. Eric, I havn't been able to get ahold of Alice yet…I'm working on that…so I can't tell you about the puns. I can't guess as to how they would, so I'd assume they got lost in translation…unfortunate, but it's still Alice In Wonderland In Shorthand! Can't complain!   And the publisher for almost every old story and book written in shorthand is none other than "The Gregg Publishing Company" in New York. After Gregg died just before 1950, McGraw-Hill Book Company bought the rights, and started publishing the "new versions" starting with Simplified, so they were no more a long time back. ./[psetus]

  5. Hi Eric,   I have Alice in Wonderland and am almost finished reading it through.  The homophones I can see in this story are not "puns" at all.  It is very easy to understand the right meaning of a homophone shorthand symbol based on the contents of that sentence.    Once your reading abilities increase, you can glance ahead when you like to view the content of any sentence.  There are no "play on words" in this story.    It is indeed a "strange" story and probably not one I would read to small children.  It's very obvious to me while I'm reading, that the author may have had too much to drink!  I was not impressed with the animated movie.  It was fine for children to watch, but personally, I found the movements too fast and the conversations too busy.  However, reading this story is incredibly interesting to follow.  Too frightening for the little ones…though the movie wasn't!   If you should win a bid for this book on ebay, be sure to get a pre-anniversary manual…you will need it!    Good luck,  Ms. Letha  🙂   Ms. Letha  🙂  

  6. I found in my 1930 Anniversary book has some listed in the back.   The Diamond Necklace (Anniervsary Edition). By Guy De Maupassant.  The Sign of Four By Sir A. Conan Doyle A Christmas Carol By Charles Dickens The Poor Relation's Story By Charles Dicons A Descent into the Maelstrom By Edgar Allen Poe   It also has ads for Graded Readings in Gregg Shorthand (anniversary Eidition.), which as business letters, short stories and fables, articles on commodities and on business customers, biographies and saying of famous men and women and three unusually interesting stores each of which fills a complete chapter.  124 pages.   And of course the Gregg Shorthand Magazine and the Gregg Writer.   Debbi

  7. Not that I know of.  There is a book titled "The Gregg Scrapbook: Being Mostly Anecdotes" by Florence Ulrich, which is written in simplified Gregg, and is a compilation of stories from the Gregg Writer.  Another book is "Encyclical Dictation" by Sister Marie Therèse, with ecclesiastical dictation material written in simplified.   I have the Graded Readings in Gregg Shorthand, but those are written in Anniversary.

  8. Here's a few others:
    Rip Van Winkle
    Hamlet
    The Diamond Necklace
    Aesop's Fables
    The Sign of the Four
    The Great Stone Face
    The Man Without a Country
    Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to his Son

    I've also discovered that Graded Readings provide great reading opportunities. There are anniversary editions and combination editions of those, both of which provide short stories as well as routine items.

  9. There are magazines of Gregg shorthand that can be found in most university libraries if they have had a business education or secretarial training department. (THE GREGG WRITER 1900-1949) and its successor (TODAY´S SECRETARY 1950-1969) were the official organs of Gregg shorthand and contained much reading material that we geared to testing, writing, and reading. They were a lot of fun to have, and I always looked forward to receiving them each month.

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