Video of the very basics

Hi everyone,

This may be a repeat here, but I didn’t remember it.  This is an introductory video on Gregg from last year. 

The part I found interesting was watching him transcribe the Gettysberg address. 
If some of you could comment on it that would be helpful.  He was not trying for speed but it looked like the individual outlines had some (not quite) pauses. (In fairness he seems to be juggling a camera in addition to talking and writing.) Are these pauses something to expect or strive to remove? I have always imagined it to be much more fluid. 
I sure wish there was a way to have an instructor to watch and to watch me.
All the best,
Matthew

(by Matthew for group greggshorthand)


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10 comments Add yours
  1. Well, for a quick glance at what that address looks like when written in Anniversary by someone like Swem or Zoubek, here it is: http://gregg.angelfishy.net/gettysburg.gif

    It should shine some light on what that speech more looks like when written quickly with nice facile outlines. But those hesitations are to be expected throughout your time learning shorthand. If you can write without hesitation, then you are good to take verbatim at high speeds. 🙂 But yeah, you should try to remove the pauses as much as you can. Think in shorthand and let 'er rip. 🙂

  2. Just a quick note on the gettysburgh gif (btw, great video Matthew!)… I noticed that Zoubek(?) uses some interesting abbreviations that are not standard. Is this common? I guess it's an example of the individual use and application of the abbreviation principle. I'm still in textbook mode, so I haven't used much non-standard abbreviations in my notes, although I do use 's-t' for 'saint', as that word appears in my notes quite a bit. But I like the way he uses 'l-e' for 'live'. That lends itself nicely to speed. I've never seen a stand alone 'e' for 'whether'. Although, it makes sense as a shorter version of reverse e-n for 'whether or not'. He also lopped off the 'k' on 'take' and reduced 'increased' to 'i-n'. Although it's all still readable, I had to refer to the text for these abbreviations. I believe this writer (Zoubek?) displays my favorite penmanship qualities, even at a high speed! Are there any other interesting examples of inventive abbreviation not shown in textbooks?

  3. In general, I commend people for putting together these videos. It takes a lot of work. They are good for showing shorthand to people that have not seen it before, or that have always been curious as to how it works. My pet peeve is not so much on the penmanship (which is not very good, as for example his right th looks like an s), but on the mistakes. Some of the outlines were just wrong, for example, "fathers", "continent", "to the", "civil", and many others. If you're showing shorthand on video, please make sure that your outlines are correct! Also, I don't think he was writing the speech as a dry dictation exercise, but more to show the viewer how are words assembled in the system in general. So that's why he was going slow.

    There is another fellow on YouTube with Gregg Shorthand lessons (he was writing what I thought was Series 90), and again, a good effort, but some outlines had mistakes, and in this case, in the joinings. He was showing the outline for the word "sea" as "right s-e", which is correct, but then proceeds to write the last name "Seawright" starting a right-s, which is completely wrong.

  4. That passage is taken from the holy grail of Gregg Shorthand books: Gregg Shorthand Reporting Course, by Swem, Gregg, and Zoubek. Those nonstandard abbreviations are reporting shortcuts, and like you noticed, they are just applications of the abbreviating principle. You will learn some of those starting in the later stages of Gregg Speed Building, then continuing in the Expert Speed Shorthand book, and many more in the Gregg Shorthand Reporting Course.

    Now that you saw the use of the "e" for whether, you could figure why the phrase "whether or not" is written as "reversed e-n." The word "take" is just "t-a", that's why it seems like he looped the "k", but there's no "k." "Increased" is "e-nk-disjoined t." By analogy, you could figure out the shortcuts for "taken", "take care", and "take advantage." Another one I like a lot is "e-left s" for "he has" (guess how to write "she has"). There are many more.

    The Congressional Record Vocabulary booklet I posted a while ago contains many of these reporting shortcuts.

  5. Wow. So I'm basically just scratching the surface with what I've seen in the functional method manual and Gregg Speed Studies 3rd ed. The latter book is one of my favorites that you recommended for a few reasons. One, the penmanship is so clear, it's just a joy to read. Also, there is so many pages of notes that you get such a wide variety of outlines to broaden your vocabulary. But I think I'm ready to go to the next level. Which of these books do you recommend, or are any of them good to start with? (Oh, and I have the phrase book pdf that was posted as well. That one is great! Also, got the congressional record vocab. I try to download everything posted here if I can… 🙂

  6. Thanks for the advice. Right now I'm going thru the Functional method keys and converting the passages and letters into shorthand, then checking my work. At first what I noticed was I wasn't joining outlines like the examples often showed. But that's getting better. My recall on the forms, brief forms, abbreviation, etc. is pretty good. Improving day by day. It's rare that I completely draw a blank. Occasionally I try to form SH outlines in my head when I'm reading something else and I come to a "big" word, and then I look it up in the shorthand dictionary to see if I was close. But most of the everyday words are recalled pretty well. I am still only transcribing, though. I'm a pretty methodical learner, and I think I would have to transcribe for a while before I tried dictation. There must be a minimum dictation speed, and I don't know if I've reached that yet.

  7. You should take next a dictation and/or speed building book to increase your vocabulary and speed. The reason for that is that before studying any of the reporting books, you need to be able to write any word without much hesitation, as you will be building on that. Further, you need to know the brief forms and abbreviation principle backwards and forwards. The Functional Method Dictation and any of the Gregg Speed Building books are good as a second step. Those two can be studied together.

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