It is my understanding that Simplified and later are generally considered to be inherently slower than Anniversary and Pre-Anniversary (but easier to learn). My understanding is that that is mostly because of the reduced number of brief forms and special forms in Simplified and later, but I am wondering what effect the elimination of the reversing principle had on speed, in the opinion of people who have used both. On the face of it, it would seem to be about a wash, and the reduction in learning time resulting from the elimination was accomplished without a detrimental effect on the final speed of a person once they became an expert. In some cases, the Simplified outline might even take less time to write than the Anniversary outline. For instance, in the word lard, estimating a reversal in the direction in which the point of the writing instrument to take about as long as it takes to write a stroke, lard would be
l-reverse-largeCCWcircle-d in Anniversary (with largeCCWCircle being a large counterclockwise circle and “reverse” being an abupt 180 degree change in writing direction)
and
l-largeCCWcircle-rd in Simplified (counting the rd as a single stroke).
Perhaps, however, outlines that take less time with the reversing principle come up more often than those that take the same amount of time or more time. What is your opinion?