Good job!

Assignment 16 in the Anniversary Functional Method Manual corresponds to Paragraphs 82 and 83 of the Anniversary Manual (Unit 9).  In assignment 16, you should study those forms as well as you study brief forms, because they will come back over and over again.  Pay attention to the odd joining of the s in the word "letters".   Actually, I like the Anniversary Functional Method Manual for learning/teaching better than the regular Anniversary Manual, because it gives you more examples and makes learning gradual.  I use the regular manual as a reference.  Be sure to get both parts for the functional method manual, and not to do any writing until Assignment 22.   The short vocabulary are indeed the special forms, which are the application of the abbreviating principle.  Beginning on Assignment 35, a group of words from the short vocabulary is presented.  They are presented at this point because at the beginning you are busy learning the brief forms, and at the end of the book you don't want to memorize a long list of words.  So by learning in small installments, students can do it with much less trouble than all at once at the end of the manual.  These special forms will be drilled and redrilled throughout the book, derivatives will be formed, and believe me, by the end, you would know these forwards and backwards.   I have seen the key to the Anniversary Manual in E-bay.

This is a great question.   The Abbreviating Principle states that words should be abbreviated by writing no more than what is necessary to transcribe them.  The way the principle is applied is by dropping the end of the word.  The key to the application is knowing what to drop.  For example, for the word "singular", should you drop "-gular", "-ular", "-lar", "-ar", or just the "r"?  In some words is obvious, but in others it is not.  But no worries, because you will learn that.   A "Brief Form" is an abbreviation of a high frequency word in the English language.  The abbreviation itself may or may not follow the Abbreviating Principle, since for some words it is not formed by dropping the ending.  For example, notice that the brief forms for the words "life" ("l-a-f"), "above" ("a-b-v"), "part" ("p-t"), and "determine" ("reverse e-mn blend") are not formed according to the Abbreviating Principle.   The "Special Forms" are less frequent words in the English language (but they come up from time to time) that originally appeared as "A Short Vocabulary" at the end of the Pre-Anniversary and Anniversary Gregg Manuals.  Louis Leslie took those words and renamed them to "Special Forms" and integrated them earlier in the text (as I said in a different post).  A great number of those words are written according to the abbreviating principle; others are not.  They are not technically brief forms because they are not common words, and they are somewhat longer words.  That's the difference.   There are also "reporting shortcuts".  You won't learn those in the first manual, but if you take on the study of shorthand reporting (especially Congressional and Legal reporting) you will encounter these as well.  These are words whose outlines have been shortened to increase speed even more.  They usually belong to a specific subject.  For example, the word "analysis" can be written as "a-n-ss" as a shortcut (instead of "a-n-a-l-ss").  Don't worry about those for now: you won't see them for a while.   Incidentally, "singular" is written "s-e-ng-u hook".   I hope this helps.

When I was in College, I used to do that in lectures, but I wouldn't write verbatim, just the important stuff.  The interesting thing is that I never transcribed a word .    In your "spare" time, learn the analogical word endings/beginnings from Anniversary, and the rules for the R (which to me is one of the coolest things about this version of Gregg), and you will be writing Anniversary sooner than you think, .   By the way, your site is very elegant.  What happened to the link for the simplified version of the text?