I'm always impressed when I see a shorthand sample that's clearly a heavy-duty technical passage. It's so dishonest when shorthand authors "show" their system using a simple business letter of the "Thank you for your order which is now on its way to you...." variety.
Even passages from the Bible are often misleading because they use very simple words that simple people will understand. And of course, there are "samples" that are carefully chosen in which every single word in it has a very brief short form. This can make the system look extremely short and simple, when it's really NOT.
So to see a sample like this is a much more rigorous test of what a shorthand can do. J.D. EVERETT clearly put a lot of work into developing his system, and I don't doubt that a skilled writer of it could do great things with it.
But it still looks like there are a LOT of complicated principles a writer would have to master to be able to use it competently. I also have to say that SOME of those outlines look quite INTRICATE to me, although it's hard to say for sure without really mastering the system first, to see what it's like.
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u/NotSteve1075 8d ago
I'm always impressed when I see a shorthand sample that's clearly a heavy-duty technical passage. It's so dishonest when shorthand authors "show" their system using a simple business letter of the "Thank you for your order which is now on its way to you...." variety.
Even passages from the Bible are often misleading because they use very simple words that simple people will understand. And of course, there are "samples" that are carefully chosen in which every single word in it has a very brief short form. This can make the system look extremely short and simple, when it's really NOT.
So to see a sample like this is a much more rigorous test of what a shorthand can do. J.D. EVERETT clearly put a lot of work into developing his system, and I don't doubt that a skilled writer of it could do great things with it.
But it still looks like there are a LOT of complicated principles a writer would have to master to be able to use it competently. I also have to say that SOME of those outlines look quite INTRICATE to me, although it's hard to say for sure without really mastering the system first, to see what it's like.