Part one: I appreciated the recent WWII diary post by @AngelaM because it was “messy” shorthand. Being new to shorthand I truly appreciate the well written exemplars to be found on this site and in textbooks. If you are going to learn something you have to know what “right” looks like. But I greatly appreciated seeing the “messy” shorthand piece as it helped bridge the confidence gap of “perfect writings” versus what I produce. To be sure, I copy slow and careful but still, it is as far as can be from “exemplary”. I’m not unhappy with my shorthand but without an experienced shorthandist to coach me I have to learn by comparison.
Part two: I love “junk shopping”. Mostly browsing in museum-like fashion but always hunting for a few select things. Like Gregg shorthand books. 🙂
I was lucky enough to find some (YES!) but as I was going to the car I noticed a very browned leaf sticking out from the top of the book. I thought to myself that I’d need to fix that loose page ASAP when I got home. But when I got home I found it was not a loose page but hand-written homework! Excellent penmanship to be sure but also “real” writing. What luck!
Epilogue: I am super happy for the find of the books and the bonus writing inside. The pair of books I found also had a lot of writing in them. Much like the WWII diary it is interesting to see the daily student life throughout the pages and the “yearbook” signings and doodles in the front and back covers. My apologies the scans aren’t great. The writing on the loose-leaf is in pencil and I tried to make the contrast good but I may have washed it out some.
Very cool. I enlarged the pictures so that one can see and read them better.
Since Ruby was using the Functional Method book, it’s interesting that she was practicing material from Assignment 3, which is still a “read-only” lesson (in both regular and functional method manuals). Her penmanship is pretty good, and assuming that she wrote the plate early in her shorthand training, that is even more remarkable.
Lastly, it takes practice and time to produce “exemplary” writing, as you call it. You have to have an idea in your mind of how the outline should look like before putting pen to paper, and this process has to become automatic — that’s why it takes time. But when learning, the most important thing is that the writing be legible, that the proportions between the characters are consistent, so that under stress of dictation, these proportions would still be maintained. This is the main reason to practice penmanship — not so much so that it would look pretty, but that when you’re taking dictation, the text can still be read without much difficulty. Keep practicing, and don’t despair.
Carlos:
Thank you for your encouragement. Thank you also for fixing up the pics and adding the link. I couldn’t quite figure it out. :/
And you are quite an amazing scholar to know from seeing those pages they were from the “Functional Method”! [N.B.: these pages were found in a “Gregg Shorthand Manual, Simplified, Functional Method — Second Edition” (c) 1955] Was there a clue that told you what type/version of Gregg it was?
You’re welcome!
Yes, notice the green book cover with the black band in the last picture.
I agree that Ruby was doing pretty good work with her penmanship!
It’s fun to find these “homework” assignments tucked in books. I’ve got a couple of books like that, not really as good as Ruby’s.
Lee