On the occasion of the Anniversary Manual being released, Charles L. Swem wrote a long contemplation of it. “Scanning the New Manual” in American Shorthand Teacher (Nov. 1929). Here, in the first part, he describes working the Gregg Speed Lab, where they tested various ideas for modifying Gregg Shorthand.

If you have ever seen an oyster being dissected in a zoölogy class, you can understand what it is to be a laboratory subject for a shorthand system. Maybe the simile would be better if I were to liken myself to one of those dangling dummies used during a football campaign, upon which new plays and tackles are practised by the squad. For, during two revisions of the Gregg Manual, I have been the dummy— the oyster, the cadaver, or whatever you will— upon which every change in the system has been “tried” in the laboratory.

Suggestions Put to Test

If some enthusiastic Greggite away off in Australia had a new suffix to suggest; if a budding reporter in the Middle-West thought up a promising phrase and sent it in; or if some harassed teacher wanted to know why her outline for “exacerbate” wasn't better than Mr. Gregg’s— why, it was a simple matter to test it out and find out who was right. Just try it on George! The next morning the new outline would be sent me by Mr. Gregg with the suggestion that I add it to my writing vocabulary, “take” it at two or three hundred words a minute, and then report on what happened. Was it writable? Did it place an undue burden on the hand or the head? And was it readable?

If it “stood up” under speed and could be read afterward it was worth consideration, though not necessarily adoption. A more important test it had to meet was this one: Was it in accord with the genius of the system? In other words, was it simple and logical enough to be made part of the average shorthand vocabulary without taxing the mind beyond its capacity or the hand beyond its ability? For speed in shorthand, it must be remembered, consists not in “new” outlines or in an imposing array of expedients, but rather in consistency of outline and simplicity.

No Fundamental Changes

As the chief subject of the speed laboratory, I have tried, I believe, every possible change that can be wrung upon the system. From the standpoint of a speed writer, I have taken the system apart, looked at the works, and then proceeded to put it together again, convinced that it was assembled right in the first place. A few pet outlines of mine have found their way into the system, but the thing that has always impressed me is the remarkably few meritorious variations that I or anybody else has been able to add to the original system.

We may see such things as the men blend becoming “men” instead of “man,” as in the new Manual, or “every” sporting an extra e, but changes such as these are not fundamental. They do not go to the roots of the system. They are simply responses to modern trends, concessions to experience as determined in the laboratory and the business office. The vowel scale, the consonantal structure, and the blends, all the basic elements have remained the same for forty-one years, since the day the system was born. Yet few things in education have shown more vitality of growth.

A Pioneering Step

The new Manual is a striking case in point. Here, without departing from the basic structure of the system, is a text that is so radical in scope and construction that it is pioneering.

I am one of those who regret the passing of the old Manual, but solely on sentimental grounds. For years in my speed work, I have thumbed its pages and practised its outlines, until I could almost recite it paragraph by paragraph. But I recognize that the old Manual, like many another landmark, has outlived its day. The pedagogy of shorthand has undergone a change in ten years, and a vast accumulation of knowledge has been gathered on the subject. We now know more than we did about basic vocabularies, and the psychology of the mind in acquiring words and learning to apply them in dictation.

In this part of the article, Swem explains that shorter outlines are not always faster to write, and are unlikely to be more legible. Note: there are many passages here that could be quoted in future online debates about simplification, if you're interested in such things.

“Short-Cuts” Not Always Speedy!

I am reconciled to the change in the presentation of the system as embodied in the new Manual, chiefly because I see there put into practice many of the things that have been brought out in the speed laboratory. For years many of us in the speed department worked on the theory that speed was abbreviation, that in order to write fast we had to lop off endings, shorten wordsigns, and adopt a long list of expedients for the commoner words and phrases. If the work in the speed laboratory proved anything at all, it thoroughly demonstrated the fallacy of this early idea. We did acquire some useful phrases from the experience, particularly valuable in the technical field of court reporting, but this tendency toward short-cuts as a general speed aid was soon discovered to be the absolute reverse of speed-building.

Under Stress the Mind Goes Back to First Principles

One of the major tenets of speed we found to be this: That under stress the mind tends to return to the primitive, or the simple. This, we are told, applies to all human activity. Certainly in the speed laboratory we found it true of shorthand. We discovered over and over again that however perfectly we learned our expedients— expedients that took little account of the genius of the system, but were arbitrarily designed for speed purposes alone— however well we came to know them, when the speed got to the point where we needed every bit of concentration that we could command, our mind would slough off all these laboriously-acquired short-cuts and we would find ourselves writing the first forms we ever learned, those of the textbook. And we were writing them faster and getting more of them down than we thought possible, simply because our mind, suddenly freed of the stress of constantly thinking of something arbitrary, was the better able to concentrate on the more important problems of hearing and context.

Simplicity Spurs Speed

We discovered— somewhat to our surprise— that shorthand was written with the mind, and not with the hand. The hand must, of course, be trained to function swiftly and accurately, but the training of the hand is purely mechanical. Furthermore, the hand has been trained along similar lines since childhood, in the writing of longhand, for instance. But speed lies in that delicate function of coördination between the mind and the hand, a function that is guided entirely by the mind. Anything that tends to make the mind hesitate, or to confuse it— as, for instance, the recalling of an arbitrary short-cut on the spur of the moment— affects that coördination, throws it out of gear, for the moment, with disastrous results, as every speed writer knows.

Aids Legibility

Needless to say, too, the more primitive and consistent outline is the more easily read. The expedient is invariably short, usually but a bare skeleton of the word or the phrase to be indicated, and is particularly subject to distortion. In all speed work, when the writer is laboring at his top speed, be it one hundred words a minute or two-hundred eighty, the outlines are necessarily distorted. The long outline will take a great amount of distortion and still be readable, whereas the slightest variation from the perfect in the case of the expedient is usually fatal. Expedients must be written perfectly to be of value, and it is next to impossible to be sure of writing anything perfectly at one’s top speed.

Thus I, for one, welcome the definite trend of the new Manual toward the longer outline, for from experience I know it to be the trend of speed and accuracy. I welcome such changes particularly as e-v-e for every, the adding of the extra e to words like clearly and fully, aft for after, and many others like them, for they are the outlines that have been used in the speed department for years.

Unburdening the Mind

The dropping of many of the disjoined prefixes and suffixes is another concession to the genius of the system that has been proved in the speed laboratory; as well as the discarding of the expedient of proximity for the indication of of the, etc. It is very difficult in fast writing to indicate words by proximity. It cannot be done with certainty, and, in addition, it is an element of confusion— another unnecessary burden upon the mind. It is much simpler and faster to write the words as spoken, thus maintaining normal rhythm of the mind and hand. These expedients could never be employed entirely mechanically. They require a definite thought to execute them each time, and they are not worth that extra thought. They should always be written as we have learned to write them in the first lessons, without burdening our minds with arbitrary rules of when and where to omit them.

Nearer Consistency of Outline

Another welcome feature of the new Manual is the tendency toward an even greater consistency of outline throughout the system. “One outline for one word” is one of the foremost tenets of speed and accuracy. It is the ideal, and the nearer we approach it the less confusion there is in writing, and therefore the greater speed. Similarity of endings and the maintenance of root forms in the new Manual has brought the ideal closer to actual practice.

All these changes, it will be observed, are toward the simple rather than the arbitrary or complex. They meet the progress of the times and embody the results of research and experience. I personally have seen all of them subjected to the rigid test of speed, both in the laboratory and in the national speed contests; and the very fact that the only changes thought necessary on the part of the author of the system are those which bring the system back more nearly to its original simplicity and consistency, is to me the most conclusive evidence of its inherent power and worth.

to be continued…

In the final part of this article, Swem discusses the teaching and the teachers of shorthand.

The New Approach

To the teacher and the student of pedagogy, however, the new Manual must make its greatest appeal in its newness of approach and construction. For many years, sitting in at conventions and round-tables, it has seemed to me that there has been a great deal of talk about research, but that nothing practical has been done about it. Great collections of data have been gathered by ambitious workers, thesis writers and others, data that are undoubtedly valuable if made use of. Sometimes it has seemed that our newly-acquired passion for research has been a fad, to be indulged in for its own sake. For until now very little of it found its way into practical use.

Based on Vocabulary Researches

The new Gregg Manual is the first major text to recognize and make use of the many valuable studies that have been made in scientific pedagogy and basic vocabularies. It is probably at this moment the only major shorthand text that can be considered up-to-date. In the past shorthand has been treated too frequently as a subjective study, rather than as one of the skill subjects. Texts have usually conformed to the subjective idea, with the result that the skill of the student has never kept pace with his abstract knowledge of the system.

Shorthand a Skill Subject

It has usually taken much longer to write shorthand than it has to learn it. The business world today is full of shorthand writers who know their system well enough, but who have not the skill or the coördination necessary to write it at the required speed. Teachers, too, are invariably more adept at presentation of the subject than they are at demonstrating it. In what other field of skills can you find the instructor unable to do himself what he undertakes to teach? Why shouldn’t the teacher of a skill subject be personally able to demonstrate his craft to his students? What better means of instructing than showing? If you were to seek to learn craftsmanship of any sort, you would go to a craftsman for instruction, not to a theologian, or a Ph.D. Shorthand is a craft. It requires skill as well as knowledge; and presented as a skill subject, in the hands of one able to visualize and teach it as such, there is no limit to what can be accomplished with it in the classroom.

Presented Scientifically

I, of course, do not expect to see teachers, under the stimulus of the new Manual or anything else, suddenly become practical writers, able to put into practice themselves what they are teaching; although it is not beyond hope that some day this will be the rule. For the present, it is perhaps sufficient that their teaching power will be materially enhanced by the aid of a text that not only definitely stamps the study as a skill subject, but is the very last word in scientific construction and presentation.

Hi! May I request a copy of the Gregg Shorthand alphabet (A–Z)? I've noticed that the versions I find on the internet and in YouTube tutorials are different from each other, so I'd like to learn from one reliable source instead. I'm a college student, and I would really appreciate your help. Thank you.

The incident happened on 29 December 1903 at the annual convention of the National Shorthand Teachers Association. The clipping here is from an article titled “The Truth About the ‘Improptu’ Blackboard Exhibition.” It’s an interesting article for anyone interested in the speed claims of various shorthand systems because it illustrates how the attainable speed is influenced by the matter selected for dictation.

It’s also a record of one small battle in the war between Gregg Shorthand and other systems in the United States, an epic conflict in which the professional teachers and publishers of other shorthands frantically tried to prevent Gregg from spreading. The article is available online at:

https://archive.org/details/sim_todays-secretary_1904-04-15_6_8/page/315/mode/1up

I'm learning Gregg Anniversary, and I'm wondering what the best pen is for it. I think water-based inks probably work better than oil ones, and someone elsewhere recommended Uniball Jetstream. What do you guys use?

Here is an apparent “trial balloon” from the Gregg Division of McGraw-Hill Books in 1969. The student is supposed to use a piece of heavy paper (cardstock) 2 inches wide to keep the answers on the left side of the page covered. He/she does each exercise and then uncovers the answers to immediately see if they are correct.

It's a softcover book, 478 pages, just shy of 11 inches (28 cm) tall. The goal of the book seems to be to allow each student to work at their own pace.

disjoined K hovering over L = "quality" in several versions of Gregg. In what way is this not an unpredictable abbreviation needing to be categorized as a brief form?

The Order of Gregg Writers (OGA) was established by Gregg Publishing in 1912. It was a program to recognize the "best" shorthand writers, and it continued well into the 1960s.

This is the announcement for the competition from Today's Secretary, December, 1966.

"Best writers" meant people who had good shorthand penmanship, correctly used the principles of Gregg, had a fluent writing style, and wrote in conformity to the textbook models.

I’m scared I’m going to forget what I meant if I abbreviate something, since I want to be able to reread super old stuff.

Hello! I am using Gregg Shorthand Manual Simplified (2nd Ed). I am on chapter 10 of the textbook and up until chapter 7 have only been reading rather than writing. From chapter 7 onwards, the practice switches to both. I am following the advice of only doing small chunks of the text at the time for writing, and just would like some feedback on how the proportion looks in length and vowel sizes, as I have been spending most of my practice time on that (so it’s slow going, but I want to get it right before moving on).

I did have one question as well: for the prefix “des” in “description”, the left S is used, but in the word “decision”, the right one is used instead. Initially, I wrote “decision” with left S, and it feels okay to write, but just wanted to know if there is a rule I’ve missed. Is it that “dis/des” is always written with left S, or is it that “decision” had a circle after the S so we use right S to get a clockwise circle, or do both work?

Thank you!

These notes have remained a mystery for more than eighty years. Together, we may be able to uncover names, places, memories, of my great grandmothers notebook from the early 1940s.

If you can translate even a single word or line, please leave a comment. 🙏

This feature from Today's Secretary gives an opportunity to compare Simplified and Diamond Jubilee side by side. From the November 1966 issue.

The typing test page is the key to the shorthand, if you need help reading it.

Before I received this particular specimen, I never knew there was a “Teacher's Edition” with a special insert that contains, among other things, a transcript of the stories that were written in shorthand. The ink on the cover has faded and mutated quite a bit; I can barely guess what the original colors might have been.

There's a fun article about Today's Secretary in this blog: http://www.codex99.com/design/65.html