hello from newcomer and tidbit about inaccuracies in brief forms charts

Just a quick hello to say I’ve been lurking here on and off for nearly a year since I took up learning shorthand again and that I’ve enjoyed reading posts and am glad to have just become an actual member and able to participate in the conversation.

Here’s something I just figured out which you may know or want to comment on. It turns out the brief form charts in the back of the books are inaccurate and have been the source of a maddening confusion to me (It started with comparing the lists of forms..and doing so across series).

I couldn’t figure out why I could never reconcile my counts of the number of brief forms (in DJS or S90) with anyone else’s no matter how many times I looked at either the typewritten “Index of Brief Forms” OR the Chart of forms at the back of the publications. It turns out they don’t accurately reflect the text. This is not obvious because one expects there to be a different number between the two lists– since the index lists all words, and the chart lists forms some of which are shared.

For example: 
*  DJS “Gregg Shorthand 1” (adult edu. series), contains Index of Words 148, Forms 133

So you would expect that the difference of 15 would be accounted for by words sharing forms.

Only after I painstakingly went through the forms did I discover that they had slipped (4) forms into the chart (into sec. 24): railroads, objected, characters, & government (all derivatives of other forms)

*  S90 (same series), lists 132 Words, 119 Forms sticks in a different (4): orderly, manufactured, difficulty, & regularly (they’re spread out through all the sections in this case).

*  S90 Functional Method sticks in a completely different list (actually more similarly to the ones in the DJS chart) objected, characters, government, and corresponded into the last lesson.

So the correct numbers are: DJS 148 Words, 129 Forms; and S90 132 Words, 115 Forms

A quick glance showed the extra words to not be in the sections brief form list so I also perused for some of them in the exercises. They are not all in the section. I don’t know if they happen to be somewhere in the entire book which would take too much effort to find out. 

I realize this is most likely an exercise in compulsive list making. But some of you will empathize and, heck, I wouldn’t be doing this if the whole thing wasn’t fun and helping me learn!

Thanks and I look forward to discussing this and other shorthand matters with you all…


Previous post:
Next post:
2 comments Add yours
  1. I wasn't aware of the difference in the Adult Education kits. In the Simplified, DJS, S90, and Centennial books, I've always gone by the index list in the regular manual. I also count repeated brief forms (so "a" and "an" are counted as two), even though they are the same outline. I don't count derivatives.

Leave a Reply