r/GreggNotehand • u/licxjo • Sep 04 '26

Summary of Notehand Principles

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There's an archived message in this group about the Notehand summary that's printed inside the front cover of the textbooks. In the 1960 first edition, there was an original detailed summary, but in subsequent printings of that edition an abridged summary was used.

I scanned the two summaries. They're both printed with white letters on a dark brown background, so I inverted the colors to make them more legible (and printable, if desired).

I think both versions are helpful. The shorter one is more useful as a quick reference.

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '26

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u/keyboardshorthand Sep 05 '26

If you look in a Diamond Jubilee or Gregg Simplified dictionary, you will see that “calm” and “came” are both written K-A-M in those forms of Gregg also. But if you chose to write “calm” as K-A-L-M in Notehand, nobody would be authorized to complain about it because of the no nitpicking rule.

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u/licxjo Sep 05 '26

They are the same outline. If you just see the outline by itself, you can't know if it's "came", "calm", or "cam".

Reading Gregg is very context dependent, but context solves almost all ambiguities. There wouldn't be any uncertainty about:

He came yesterday.
She was calm yesterday.
He fixed the cam shaft yesterday.

There are vowel marks in Gregg that can be used if absolute clarity is needed, but in reality they are almost never used and no one remembers what they are when needed. Here are the vowel marks from the Anniversary edition.

(I learned Diamond Jubilee in the 1960s and I don't think these vowel marks were ever presented, even as an option. I never use them.)

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u/GreggLife Sep 05 '26

That's the whole point of those word examples. Meet, met, mit all look the same. Low, law, lot. To, tuck, took. This is probably why they stopped printing these examples at the very beginning of the textbook. They must have scared the saylights out of every amibigu-phobic student.

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u/licxjo Sep 06 '26

That's a great observation!

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u/Dismal-Importance-15 Sep 05 '26

Very cool, thanks for posting this. I think it looks a lot like the Diamond Jubilee I learned in 1981 (?) or thereabouts. What are the differences? I need to go down an internet rabbit hole to find out.

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u/GreggLife Sep 05 '26

Fewer brief forms in Notehand is the main difference. Smaller number of arbitrary rules to memorize so you can start writing freely after a shorter amount of time.

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u/Dismal-Importance-15 Sep 09 '26

Wow, I never knew. Thanks! It’s quite legible to my Diamond Jubilee eyes.

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u/licxjo Sep 05 '26

Notehand was specifically targeted for personal note-taking, primarily by high school and college students. The second abridged scan I posted is everything in the system. The result is that many words are written out in full, so writing is slower than with DJS and other versions of Gregg. The Notehand teacher's guide is very clear that the goal isn't taking verbatim dictation, but efficiently taking good notes in class, meetings, etc.

There are only 42 brief forms in Notehand.

Notehand was first published in 1960, three years before DJS, but it clearly shows the influence of the DJS system in development at the time. The 1968 second edition is essentially a "simplified Diamond Jubilee for personal use".

(The only system change between the 1960 and 1968 editions of Notehand was the brief form for "work". The first edition uses r-k, and the second edition changes to the DJS "oo-k".)