There have been several posts here concerning
the omission of minor vowels in Gregg Shorthand. There is some guidance in the
earlier material, such as the 1916 Manual and the related Qs and As book
(1924). But what about Simplified?
Rich Harrison recently pointed out that certain texts are available on the Open
Library. I had a look at “Gregg Speed Building Simplified”, and
there, at the beginning of each chapter, are the principles for omitting minor
vowels in Simplified; these principles are probably also relevant to other
versions of Gregg Shorthand.
I have attached a summary I made for my own reference; please feel free to use
this if you wish (and let me know if there are any mistakes).
Attachment: Omission of Minor Vowels (Simplified)
cope without knowing all the rules!
Rich’s comment is found here:
http://gregg-shorthand.com/2012/05/23/some-books/
This is very good! Thanks for putting it together. I created a PDF and am now hosting the file for the blog.
Very nice, thank you.
I've been getting to the point where I've started intuitively grasping when to leave out vowels, but it has been along journey.
I find I'm doing pretty well with reading, but am hesitant with writing, and I think a lot of this is to do with the omission of vowels. Like you, I know a lot of these principles at some level, but seeing them written out as rules or conventions will (I hope) enable me to write more confidently – without having to memorise the dictionary!
I enjoyed doing it!
Do you know if there's an explanation anywhere for disjoining -er in keeper & worker (in Simplified); I thought the rule (in Simplified) only applied if the last sound of the word is omitted. Also, both words have a joined past tense. Thanks.
That disjoined -er is an interesting question. The rule for doing it in Anni and Pre-Anniversary was discussed here:
http://greggshorthand.blogspot.com/2004/10/er.html
I couldn't find anything in a quick scan of the Simplified manual that would authorize this disjoining.
Must come under the "looks odd" rule!
Yes, that's the reason.
There is a small rule (not in the manual, but in the Q & A book) that says that if there are three curves written in succession, an angle must be present between two of those curves for legibility. If we write "keeper" together (as k-p-r), the angle would be between the k and the p, and in the past that outline was the outline for "compare." My guess is that they didn't want to use that outline for "keeper" to avoid confusions, even though "compare" in simplified has an a between the p and the r.
Incidentally, in S90, the outlines for "keeper" and "worker" are written with the joined r: k-e-p-r for keeper and r-k-r for worker (this last one looks like a moustache).
I was referencing this document recently and I put it into table form to help me better visualize the omissions. If anyone else finds it useful, here's the link.
This includes all the omissions in the original text document posted, although in creating the tables I realized some of the principles overlapped, so I reduced them where possible for clarity. Let me know if you have any questions!
Thanks a lot for this! It is very good. I'm hosting the file now, so I edited the original link.
This is an awesome reference, thank you! Trying to figure out the consistency in Simplified for when to omit vowels has been a burr under my saddle.