At one point when I was reading through the archives, I could swear I ran across a post mentioning the results of some study/research, which laid out how much different pieces of the shorthand puzzle contributed to the overall speed.
I’m not talking about the usual ‘building speed tips’ posts; what I am remembering is something along the lines of phrasing contributed x percent, then brief forms, then the alternate symbols/alphabet gave another Y percent, etc. etc. with diminishing returns showing up as you go down the list.
And now I can’t find the bookmark, can’t find the post. I’m beginning to wonder if I just dreamed it or something.
Ring any bells for anybody? Even if such a post turns out to be nonexistent, I would be interested to see if such a *study* exists (as opposed to the ‘everybody’ knows opinions, which aren’t hard to find at all 🙂 ).
My (possible imagined) memory of this indicates it was about Gregg, but can’t be sure until I see it again.
I don't know about whether there's such a study, but I'll be watching this post, because I'm fascinated about the question myself.
The closest thing I could find was "The Law of Diminishing Returns" section beginning on page 69 in Gregg Reporting Shortcuts. Is this what you were looking for? (I have Evernote's amazing search to thank for tracking this down!)
Beginning on page 68, rather. It continues on 69.
There's also this page from 20 Shortcuts to Shorthand Speed by Clyde Insley Blanchard (1939), pg. 60:
42% of dictation is made up of 51 brief forms and other short easy words.
35% is made up of 42 repetitions of short easy words.
17% is made up of 20 common words of average difficulty.
Only 6% contains difficult words.
Neither of these is it, but I'm quite pleased to see them; they are both new to me, so looks like this question will turn up some quite interesting bits, regardless of whether the original study turns out to really exist or not!
And this time I'm going to bookmark the dang things…
You might try browsing Research Gate. That's where I found quite a few Notehand studies, as well as studies for the other editions. You might need to request the articles through your local interlibrary loan to access them, though, unless you are a university student.
Oh, one more place you can look is Taylor Francis Online, another research portal. There is tons of stuff for Gregg Shorthand there. Often the first page of the article can be viewed on this website. But to see the whole thing, you can request it via interlibrary loan.
This looks quite promising; came across a James Hill (the Teeline guy) paper on improved shorthand teaching methods right out of the gate. Thanks!