I am pleased to see that the use of Gregg is growing, requiring a disciplined approach to writing and thinking. Too much has modern digital gadgetry suborned our personal skills.
In October 1939 while stationed on Salisbury Plain, coping with the phony war, one of the pastimes made available was shorthand classes. I had started learning shorthand from my mother who was a secretary to a Labour cabinet minister. She was amused to experience being chauffeur-driven in a car bedecked with Labour slogans to the voting station where she voted Conservative!
When I attended the first shorthand lesson, I was disappointed to find that it was not ‘proper’ shorthand with thick and thin strokes, on, below and above the line. It wasn’t Pitman’s, but a uniform light-line stenography based on the ellipse, called Gregg. I was astonished to find that I was writing sentences during the first half-hour and still remember “I can cash the cheque at the market”!
It was incredibly easy to learn and execute but after a few weeks the instructor was posted away, and Gregg lessons were to cease. Somewhat adventurously, I said that because I had learned Pitman’s, I would take the class and had to keep one week ahead of the group when taking them through the manual. To questions such as, “How is a “w” inserted, or how do you write “er”, I would say “That comes in a later lesson” and then devote the subsequent week staying ahead of them. I made use of my Gregg during the following six years and my phonetic call=sign was “no nighty”  nonite. I still use Gregg in my Filofax diary and eschew the mophone.