Hi everybody. I volunteered to translate some steno pads from 1928 for a history professor at my college since nobody on the face of the earth seems to write Gregg out here; there are five of them so just scanning or mailing them isn’t practical.
Anyway, given the date, it’s certainly not going to be in Simplified, and most likely in Anniversary.
Is it even possible for a Simplified writer to read Anniversary without learning it (with a brief forms dictionary maybe)? I’m familiar with the R principle, but have no idea how much deeper Anniversary theory goes than Simplified beyond the brief forms.
Thanks for your input 🙂
(by niftyboy1 for everyone)
1928 is going to be 5th edition, aka "pre-anniversary". I don't think you'll be able to keep from learning it with that volume of stuff. And what an opportunity!
If it's written well, you're in an enviable position. I moved from Simplified to 1916 edition myself without too much trouble; but the manual is very concise, and having lots of reading material to cut one's teeth on is generally considered the best way to learn.
If you have time to wait for delivery, buy a copy of the manual on Abebooks for a few bucks. Otherwise checkout Andrew's pdf at angelfishy. A couple of hours priming on theory ahead of time will save you much time, frustration and self-doubt when you get into your transcription.
The chapters you'll be most interested in are 8 (the reverse r) and then 11 to 20 on phrasing and prefixes and suffixes, including the "tr" principle.
Deciphering phrases is always a task. But I don't think the principles will give you much trouble at all once you know to spot them. And pre-anni is so consistent in its application of the principles that you can usually guess right based on what you're already familiar with.
The 200 some-odd brief forms might give you a little more trouble. I suggest going over Andrew's brief forms list for 1916 once, maybe twice. Don't try to memorize them ahead of reading. First, they constitute the very most common words; so you'll get familiar with them soon just by reading. Second, pre-anni "word signs" are really just a published list of *applications* of the abbreviating principle; and the pre-anniversary abbreviating principle is very simple, non-technical and intuitive. Check it out in chapter 10.
Good luck, and keep us posted!
Thanks for the useful information! Just out of curiosity, why did you decide to move from Simplified to Pre-Anniversary?
I'm personally considering it because the conciseness of Gregg in its strokes (as compared to alphabetic systems e.g.) has always been a major attraction, and Pre-Anni/Anni have even mooore of that 😀 I was delighted to see the "inter" and "electr-" word beginnings as part of the broader "tr" principle myself. Then again, it took me four years to get through the Simplified manual due to inconsistent interest (mostly brought on by how dry the letters are).
I'll get to take a look this Thursday, and I'll let you all know how it is. I'm hoping it's well-written so I can learn Pre-Anni from (hopefully) interesting material instead of the Sahara-esque letters that plague Gregg manuals.
> Just out of curiosity, why did you decide to move from Simplified to Pre-Anniversary?
I just couldn't stop wondering. And as I looked into it it felt very consistent; there's an "-ity" ending for every consonant–not just r and l. Many of the rules that seemed ad hoc fell into larger categories (as you noticed with "inter-" and "electr-"), which helps me remember them all better. All the prefixes one usually picks out in language are there. Or almost all. And in general I found 1916 a bit "loosely" specified, which struck me as suiting this writing system.
I'd hate to disparage any other edition, though. And 1916 isn't perfect. Sometimes I really wonder about some of Gregg's choices. And I know there's plenty of DJS and Simplified writers on the list here that could school me!
Let me give you a hand in your transcription effort. I've uploaded a file called Reverse_Dict.txt in the Documents section of this site. I've been working on it for the last several months and have been meaning to upload it. It is a dictionary where you can look up an Anniversary Gregg outline and find what words it corresponds to. I compiled it using 5,000 Most-Used Shorthand Forms on the gregg.angelfishy.net site, so don't expect it to be comprehensive. Even though it is specifically geared towards Anniversary, I've found that most of the outlines in Anniversary and the 1916 edition are the same, so it should help you. Good luck.
Wow, I just got some copies of the steno pads today, and I gotta say… I can read the pads I wrote when I was just starting more easily than this. The As and Es are the same size a majority of the time, letters are joining in odd shapes I've never seen before (one looks like a giant backwards S with an E on the end), and short words like "or" are a mystery of constantly-changing squiggles that only context would help me figure out… if I could read more than one word every five lines.
What a disappointment! It's definitely Pre-Anniversary since I can catch a few brief forms from it here and there, but even then, some basic words are inexplicably written out…
I attached a scan of a page, just to get everyone else's opinion on it.
Looks like I'll have to learn Anniversary another way!
Attachment: Picture.jpg
The resolution on your jpg is a bit small; I could feel a headache coming on by the time I was on line three. But yes, that looks like pretty bad Gregg. Transcribing 5 stenos-worth would be exacting.
tayiyi, what an interesting project!
To be honest, the size doesn't make much of a difference… I got a headache too after about the third page of brain-wracking, only to come up with a bunch of "of the"s and "a"s. I'd get three or four words and get really excited, then come upon a shape I'd never seen before, where even finding individual letters was impossible.
Looks like that poor fellow is out of luck! 🙁 I guess military generals aren't known for their penmanship 😉
Chuck: since you can make some sense of the jumble, would you mind if I put you in touch with the fellow who wants the translation?
It is not written according to theory either, and on a steno book with Pitman spacing to boot!
It's too small for deciphering. Can't you scan it a little bigger? I can read … "first entered the military service and you were the … you(r) first military service? My first military service was in … 1893 … They gave you military service with one's commission …? I served in the National Guard … use (?) bill of the Spanish war." The last line reads "entered the National Guard in 1907" It is readable, but definitely not for the faint of heart!!!
Not a problem, but it's hard for me to say now if I can read it all. That's why I said if you could scan it bigger, I would see if I could do it. My e-mail address is on the PenPals section of the forum.