Shorthand

[prog]

This is a curious image of a reporter writing in shorthand, found by dougo.

My whole life I understood the word "shorthand" as a synonym for "abbreviation", not a complete and formal writing system that looks like alien script to the uninitiated. But the commenters on that photograph say it's so, and Wikipedia agrees, with yet more graphic evidence. Very interesting!

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think that if you really do need an accurate, fast text record of what somebody else is saying, shorthand in some form is still a good way to do it. The (more popular) alternative is sound recording, but that can still be unreliable in an environment with background noise and chatter, and it still isn't used in contexts where an official record is needed (unless the recording is of a human recorder dictating into a stenomask). Typing on a standard keyboard is too slow to keep up verbatim; you have to summarize.

But shorthand has certainly become a specialty skill rather than a common one. What's really disappeared is the notion that managers and other professionals dictate all their documents to secretaries, who then type them up or hand the transcripts off to someone who types them up. Once there was a computer on every desk, with screen editing and spell check so that even bad typists could produce good-looking output, things changed rapidly.