The Gregg Group was founded 22 May 2004, prompted by the lack of online shorthand resources. As the primary use for shorthand — business and legal recording — has waned in recent decades, we generally acclaim the skill as a hobby or personal tool. The purpose of the group is to promote the use of Gregg systems of shorthand by providing advice to beginners, support for students, and an association of users of this efficient, attractive, and enjoyable method of writing.
This selection about fireflies and other creatures appeared in various newspapers in the early twentieth century. I updated the text and transcribed it in Anniversary Gregg for the blog.
Attachment: the-light-of-the-firefly.pdf
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Well that was interesting. I didn’t know that owls sometimes luminesced. Nor that glow worms ate, rather gruesomely, snails. And weren’t some people cruel to the fireflies by wearing them? And it ended philosophically.
But here are rather a lot of questions.
p2c1 l5 “light” rather than “like”?
p2c2 l8 “outbursts”. I see that before p (or b) the “out” is not joined. Is this mentioned in the manual?
p3c1 l7 There seem to be two “lead” outlines.
p3c1 l14 I read this part as “Not even man’s inventions produce a greater amount of light”. But there are other outlines which I ignored – should I have? [And should it say “inventions produce”, rather than “produces”.]
p3c2 l12 What is the insect? Cocujo?
p4c2 l6 “light” rather than “like”?
p4c2 l14 “anesthesia”. My dictionary has a final “sia”. But it read fine as you wrote.
p5c1 l1 second outline. I read it as “of”, but it can’t be.
p5c1 l6 Between “dose” and “digestive” there is a dot. I read that as “of” too?
p5c1 l14 ‘fluking’ does not make sense to me but I could not think of another word.
p5c2 l6 “Greeks ?? called”
p6c1 l13 I could not get the last outline
p6c2 l3 Not sure of the last two outlines. I read “is probabl[y] due to” but that skips over some things.
I’m glad you liked it. For some reason, since there were so many instances of “light”, I ended up swapping “like” for “light” and viceversa! I think I fixed them all now. As to your questions:
p2c2 l8: It is not specifically mentioned in the Anniversary manual. In later series, those outlines (no pun intended) are joined.
p3c1 l7: Corrected.
p3c1 l14: The quote is (missing text in italics): ” … not even man’s inventions being excepted. In other words, it produces a greater amount of light …”
p3c2 l12: “Cocuyo” is the insect’s name, very common in the Caribbean.
p4c2 l14: I used the medical shortcut for “anesthesia”, since it is much easier to write.
p5c1 l1: The word is “off.”
p5c1 l6: I forgot the outline for “of”, so now it reads “dose of a digestive.”
p5c1 l14: The word is “fluctuating.”
p5c2 l6: The word is “poetically.”
p6c1 l13: The word is “luminosity.”
p6c2 l3: “The apparition of the will-o’-the-wisp, it is probable, is due to the fact that some ordinary …” (It is an oddly constructed sentence.)
Thanks Carlos.
Interesting about “out-“. The -p and -b joinings seem awkward. I looked in my simplified dictionary and they avoid the issue! (Not what you want from a dictionary.) No outlines given for outburst or output.
I should have got “poetry” and “luminosity” though.
But thanks for untangling those sentences.
“Output” is written separately in Simplified and DJS for clarity since “put” is a brief form. See below from page 15 of the first edition of Gregg Speed Building Simplified:
In S90, “put” is written in full, so it is attached to the word.
I write “burst” separately for clarity because it is an odd joining. However, I could write it together.
I don’t have the simplified Speed building so thank for the example. I can see in the S90 example that the out-p joining is indeed, as you say, an odd joining.
I started with Simplified because that was the book on the shelves at that time. Had I started later it may have been DJS — which, as I see more about it, seems a bit better suited to my (then) needs than was simplified.
I found the answer on page 273 of the June 1927 issue of The Gregg Shorthand Magazine, the UK equivalent of The Gregg Writer. This is how the word “outbreak” is written:
Since they connected the a – oo hook and the b – r – a – k, I have corrected the outline for “outburst.”
The key for writing this kind of outline is to think one is going to write a – k (instead of the a – oo hook of “out”), but write an oo-hook instead of the “k” to connect to the downstroke. If one thinks of writing the word “out”, the “a” will be too vertical and will clash with the curve of the downstroke. By making the “a” a little more horizontal, it allows a good curve for the p/b.
Wow! How long did it take to find that?!
It shows clearly how it should look. But I think your original dis-joined “out-” is clearer. But thanks for your analysis of how it should best be written. I can foresee some ditherings in my writing of such words in fuure.
(I tried the link but I was blocked by a ‘limited only’ something-or-other.)
Many thanks, Nick
You’re welcome! I believe all issues of The Gregg Shorthand Magazine up to 1929 are public domain in the US and are available on Hathi Trust. So it is a great resource to have handy. The Gregg Shorthand Magazine used to publish the transcripts of the plates on the magazine on the same issue (as opposed to The Gregg Writer, which either published the transcript a few months later, or in Business Education World). I started searching for “outp” or “outb”, and finally found a word that wasn’t “output.” Let’s say I was lucky!
Since the file is labeled as public domain in the US, I believe that’s what is happening to you. Try accessing with a VPN; that may halp!