A Message for New Members

Thank you all so much. Teri I am trying your link and having trouble getting thru. I'll keep trying. I would appreciate the pdf.

Greetings all,

My name is Tynitra. I have been interested in learning shorthand for a few years and decided to begin to study in earnest this month, so that I can increase the speed in which I take notes at the office.

I own the "Gregg Shorthand Manual Simplified, Second Edition" and was searching the Internet for tools to aid in practicing what I am learning when I happened upon this site. I am most grateful to be included in the Gregg Group, and look forward to using the resources provided and reading the posts. Cheers.

Hello, my name is Mary and I took Gregg shorthand in a Secretarial course many years ago. I didn't finish the shorthand class, but when I saw my textbook online, I purchased it, and found that I still remembered many of the forms. Working at a non-profit, where people call seeking assistance, it's good to be able to take down their stories quickly, w/out losing any details. It's also good to have it be unreadable to others, as shorthand usually is to most people, for the sake of confidentiality. Finding this website was wonderful, I didn't know anyone else out there was still interested in shorthand! I look forward to listening and learning from all of you here, as I continue to practice my shorthand daily (slowly but surely!).

Hello everyone. My name is Brenda and I have recently decided to refresh my shorthand skills after…let's see…48 years? YIKES, has it been that long?

I learned Gregg shorthand in high school. Looking through books that are available to purchase now, I think it must have been the Diamond Jubilee edition I learned from originally. I have now bought a few different editions and am just playing around at a slow but steady pace until I decide which edition I want to focus on.

I probably won't post much here, but I will enjoy seeing what other have to say.

Carlos, thank you for allowing me to join.

I've always been interested in writing systems of all kinds. At various times of my life (starting in childhood) I've studied Morse code, semaphore, the Hebrew and Cyrillic alphabets, the Japanese syllabary and (to a lesser extent) other characters, and Braille. I learned to type before the days of computers, years before any of my friends did—and then was thrilled in later years to learn about Dvorak, which I happily switched to!

The first time I thought about shorthand was in 1987 at age 21 when I read a book called Emergence by David Palmer. The main character keeps a journal in Pitman shorthand, which she highly recommends over Gregg.

This got me interested, and I checked a Pitman book out of the library. But I found the thick-and-thin aspect of it difficult; it made my hands tense and I lost interest. At the same time, I began to doubt Palmer's expertise, since another quirk of the character's journal was that she left off words like "a" for being wasteful of time and space—but those words seemed so little wasteful in shorthand that it made me question whether Palmer had any experience in shorthand himself. I abandoned the whole pursuit.

Soon afterwards, I noticed a school secretary making notes in Gregg. I'd never seen shorthand in the wild before. (This would have been about 1990.) I was jealous of her ability!

A few years later, I took my baby to the library to escape our unairconditioned apartment. Browsing in the stacks, I discovered Gregg shorthand. I didn't check the books out; I may have been concerned that if I had them at home they would distract me from my child, or I may have been embarrassed to be studying such a thing (though I'm not sure why), so I sat at a desk in the library studying it with the baby sleeping in a stroller beside me. I am pretty sure we spent a number of summer afternoons that way.

Life went on, without much shorthand, but eventually I picked up a shorthand book or two that I found at a used bookstore. Not knowing the differences between editions, I was surprised by the different outlines taught, but that didn't slow me down much.

In 2000, when my third child was born, I was in my second phase of interest in shorthand. I remember rocking him in his room at night, writing shorthand in my head. But soon afterwards I became discouraged because although I could write shorthand at an encouraging rate of speed, I often couldn't read my own note, though I could read the manuals just fine. Clearly I wasn't making the outlines properly, but it wasn't clear how I could improve, and didn't seem worthwhile. I got rid of my books.

Now, having discovered the wonderful resources available online, I am back, studying Anniversary. (I believe my previous resources were DJ and Simplified.) I chose this because I enjoy learning systems like this, so simplicity doesn't attract me that much (and honestly, it doesn't seem that much more difficult), and because I know the value of large amounts of reading material. I am thrilled to be able to read in shorthand!

I've been startled at the speed with which reading has helped me. I haven't done a lot of writing yet, but after I'd spent just one or two sessions reading, outlines would spring almost fully-formed into my head when I thought about shorthand. I don't even think of myself as very visually oriented, but the reading is clearly helping.

I'm also a teacher of Spanish and German, and my quick improvement when reading shorthand has reinforced my belief that lots of reading, beginning early, is important for my students.

Hello,

My name is Jeremy. My interest in Gregg is two-fold. One, my hands have essential tremor so standard handwriting (or hand anything) takes a little more time and focus. My desire is to at least increase the efficiency with which I write if not the speed. Two, I am a hobby linguist. Linguistics was part of my degree in school and Gregg intrigues me in that some of the ideas and principles behind it are fascinating.

I have been learning Simplified Gregg for the past four months now and am able to write in it with the same speed as I write in standard hand writing.

I am grateful for the expanded resources this blog provides and hope to contribute what I learn.

Jeremy