English Shorthand And Other Lost Skills

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TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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Recently I read a book called the Diary of Samuel Pepys. I came across it randomly but it's really cool. Samuel Pepys was essentially upper middle class everyman who lived in the British Empire in the 17th century. He lived through the British Civil War and it is just an interesting thing to read about a mostly average guy from 400 years ago. The more things change the more they stay the same.

During this time he wrote the actual diary in a form of 17th century shorthand. He later rewrote it in more formal longhand as we would be able to read. He suspected that eventually someone would find it interesting. I'm 35 and never learned Shorthand in Oregon K12 and the more I learn about it the more I wonder why. Shit is useful. I asked my Mom who attended K12 in the 60s and she never learned it either. So in the manner of learning and using "outdated" and lost skills I started learning shorthand from the 17th century. Although I understand that Gregg Shorthand from the 19th century is better. I'll get to that eventually if I need to I guess. You can find the instruction manual for Shelton Shorthand from 1620 on Amazon so I've been using that.

There's literally dozens of formats for it so pick your poison I guess. They look like this. These are all for English.

1643196091323.png
 
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Furry

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Recently I read a book called the Diary of Samuel Pepys. I came across it randomly but it's really cool. Samuel Pepys was essentially upper middle class everyman who lived in the British Empire in the 17th century. He lived through the British Civil War and it is just an interesting thing to read about a mostly average guy from 400 years ago. The more things change the more they stay the same.

During this time he wrote the actual diary in a form of 17th century shorthand. He later rewrote it in more formal longhand as we would be able to read. He suspected that eventually someone would find it interesting. I'm 35 and never learned Shorthand in Oregon K12 and the more I learn about it the more I wonder why. Shit is useful. I asked my Mom who attended K12 in the 60s and she never learned it either. So in the manner of learning and using "outdated" and lost skills I started learning shorthand from the 17th century. Although I understand that Gregg Shorthand from the 19th century is better. I'll get to that eventually if I need to I guess. You can find the instruction manual for Shelton Shorthand from 1620 on Amazon so I've been using that.

There's literally dozens of formats for it so pick your poison I guess. They look like this. These are all for English.

View attachment 394965
My handwriting always looks like this. I just say its shorthand.
 
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Borzak

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I have very bad handwriting. I had two options in life. Become a doctor or work in the engineering field lol.
 

Hoss

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WTF does this say? Do they all say the same thing in the different styles? I didn't even know there were different styles.

My mom knows shorthand. I think they only bothered to teach it to court stenographers and secretaries.
 

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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WTF does this say? Do they all say the same thing in the different styles? I didn't even know there were different styles.

My mom knows shorthand. I think they only bothered to teach it to court stenographers and secretaries.
There's apparently been hundreds of different styles over the centuries. It would have made taking college notes and stuff a lot easier if you were taught to write this way IMO.
 

Hoss

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There's apparently been hundreds of different styles over the centuries. It would have made taking college notes and stuff a lot easier if you were taught to write this way IMO.
Maybe. Depends on how the shorthand activates the brain, or how fluent you are in it. I could see a scenario where you were so concentrated on what you were writing that you weren't making sense of it. For me, that's how taking notes helped me. I would take notes and then usually never read them again. The act of writing them down was all I needed.