Hello,
I’m taking the liberty to open a new thread dedicated to the topic Christine just started on the “dictation practice” thread, to keep the two separated. I hope you won’t mind, Carlos.
So Christine was saying:
“What would really interest me is an update of the Sénécal: my version is a lot older than yours and I find very convenient all the prefixs and suffixs. For example, wouldn’t it be nice to have the prefix ‘hydro-‘ to make ‘hydrogène’, ‘hydrophyle’, ‘hydravion’, ‘hydrodynamique’…? There are niceties that would help for the legibility and the speed…
Shorthand is a matter of convention. We are not so many to use French Gregg: I think we could agree on new rules.”.
About hydro-, why not maybe simply use the dot that theoretically stands for aspirated h? Since it is seldom used if at all, maybe it could represent hydro-?
I was also intrigued by your remark that French articles and prepositions (le, la, les, des, de la, du, etc.) take up a lot of space. And I was wondering: I can’t see what existing smaller symbol could be hijacked to write these, however it occurred to me recently that Gregg doesn’t use a whole ellipse that (to my untrained eye, correct me if I’m wrong) seems readily distinguishable from the others already in use, I mean this one:
There’s at least 6 new curves (large, medium and small for each side of the ellipse) that could be used in there, of which 4 would be smaller than our current L and D…
Maybe these are preposterous ideas but I thought it can’t hurt to mention them anyway and see what you think?