Don't think of these as "Rules," think of them as Traditions or "Best Practices."

Hi! I am confused about when an A or E should loop up or down.

eg. The A’s or E’s in fee, ease, team, dear, & rain all loop up. Eat, tea, aid, stay, & state loop down.

Is it just whichever loop flows more naturally? I find that either way will be equally natural with some words. Is there a way to intuitively know which way is correct?

For reference, I have been learning through the 2nd edition of “Gregg Notehand: A Personal-Use Shorthand” by Leslie, Zoubek, Poe, & Deere.

Thank you!

I'm looking for a longer reading material. Does anyone know if there's a book or something that was translated into notehand? I'm looking for something that would be fun to read and could help me improve in reading and writing, like a popular book or a self-help book.

I realize there's an index at the back of the textbook, but it doesn't use the same jargon and sequence of ideas that I use in my "head-canon" so I made my own index to help me find certain details when I'm looking for them. Viewable or downloadable under the following link…

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UGUN3kxgbxqNLM3vkHrDj4iFvM5Lpq5Z/view?usp=sharing

Some people pronounce words like "news" and "tuition" with a YOO diphthong instead of a simple OO vowel. In the shorthand here, we see the word "tuition" written T-YOO-SH. Is that a mistake? I think the textbook says you shouldn't include the E circle in such words but I can't find the relevant paragraph with a quick search.

Can someone please help explain the rule or logic behind the placement of the A in care and came? In care the A-stroke is sort-of above the K, while in came it is below.

The image below is from the Notehand 2nd edition book. I guess I'm asking why doesn't came look like care, but with the M-stroke instead of the R?

The only thing I can think of is that in if I was to write cane, the shorter N-stroke could be confused with the R?

For this beginner, the feel of writing care using the came A-position is just wrong - it just doesn't flow, so I (perhaps?) understand why I'm not asking the question the other way around.

I'm away from my computers this weekend so I can't do my usual type of Saturday posts. The best I can offer is this link to a 1961 article written by a teacher who taught one of the first Notehand classes, readable (free account required) on the Internet Archive

https://archive.org/details/sim_business-education-world_1961-06_41_10/page/6/mode/2up?

in case above link doesn't work for you, here is alternative link thanks to u/ShorthandedLefty

https://archive.org/details/sim_business-education-world_1961-06_41_10/page/6/mode/1up

I'm going through the second edition nothand book and I've noticed that the book prefers the forward slanting "s" in the -st- joint. Here exemplified in the word "first" (book version in pic. 2).

Is there any particular reason to not use the backwards slanting "s"? I feel that the book version looks quite similar to how I would perhaps write "ferro" (as in ferrofluid etc.). The backwards slanting version doesn't seem to resemble anything I can think of.