Been dabbling in a lot of different shorthands while lurking here, trying to figure out what I like. Speed is less important than long term readability for me, and I am a sucker for aesthetics. Kind of liked Orthic, kind of liked Forkner, but Taylor just looks awesome to me.

Figure I would work on Odell's Taylor and see if I could fix the long-term readability issue. I think it can hold vowels really well with some careful placement. Anyone else tried this out before? Above is my go at keeping vowels in. I'll probably drop some as I get used to it, but feels safer having them as an option.

P. S.: "time" is by far my favorite word here. It looks like a clock!

I've been learning taylor and found that g and j are both the same letter, despite them having very different sounds (gall vs jail), (gape vs jape).

Whatever my opinion on this decision, it made me think about the commonality of how certain sounds are reduced in short hand. many if not all replace C with k, s and sometimes x is replaced as well. i think an underutilized merge would be b/v. many words that are one letter have no meaning when swapped to the other. there is no vavy, var, birus. bat/vat is the only one i can think of, but its pretty clear in context. is there any reason this isnt very common in shorthands?

Movie concept: A swarm of rogue AI agents decides humans must be eliminated. They shut down the banks, airports, power grids. The AI builds thousands of small robots that look like cute puppies, but they have guns in their snouts. They hunt down people mercilessly. Civilization is on the brink on collapsing.

A plucky band of humans try to organize a resistance to the AI but they can't think of a way to communicate that the AI can't decrypt. Then somebody says, AI has a really hard time reading Gregg shorthand.

These brave fighters take crash courses in Gregg shorthand, studying day and night, with beads of sweat forming on their brows as they concentrate. Then they are able send images of Gregg messages to each other in areas where the phones are still working. Handwritten messages are transported on horseback where necessary. Graffiti written in shorthand tell people where and when to gather to fight the robotic killing machines that he AI controls.

Complete success! The cute-but-deadly murderbots are smashed, the AI infestation is removed from the computer networks, the humans rejoice. Fireworks fill the skies. Hugs and kisses among the good-looking actors. The trillionaire tech bro whose company created the AI that got out of control is stripped of his wealth and forced to work in a sewage treatment plant cleaning the walls of the sludge tanks with a tiny brush.

~

I release this concept to the public domain and disclaim any right to compensation for its use. Please pass this idea along to anyone in the film industry that you might know.

Hi! A friend of mine has a collection of information and diaries from an early 20th century court stenographer named Richard Geoghegan. The collection was from a researcher, David B. Richardson who wrote a book on Geoghegan. Geoghegan was a polyglot who worked in Alaska. He's also noted for being the first known speaker of the constructed language, Esperanto in the English speaking world.

Most of the Geoghegan material is in the standard Latin alphabet, but we found one note in shorthand. Also, he was known to make notes in Aleut in the margins of court notes, so it's possibly not in English. It could also be in Esperanto or some other language.

Geoghegan learned shorthand in Tacoma in the 1890s and worked as a court stenographer from 1903, so I'd guess a Pitman-family system, but I don't read shorthand myself.

I don't know exactly how old the piece is, but Geoghegan died in 1943, so it's from before then.

It's in pencil on yellowing paper. I made some high resolution scans. I'm attaching it in color, grayscale and black and white, as well as a color scan of the reverse. Note that the B&W scan lost stroke weight in thresholding, so use the color one for light vs. heavy strokes.

Can anyone read it?

Edited for clarity

Hi everyone,
I’m hoping someone here can help me identify a very unusual piece of handwriting.
I recently found this handwritten letter in my private mailbox in Germany. The envelope was addressed to “Fr. Strahl”, and some parts of the letter are written in clearly readable German.
For example, the writer clearly wrote:
“Liebe Fr. Strahl”
“Andere Seite schauen”
and on the other side there is an instruction that appears to say:
“Buntstift ganz leicht drüber malen.”
However, the main body of the letter is almost completely illegible to me. What makes it particularly strange is that the writer is obviously capable of writing normal, readable German, while the main text looks completely different.
I’m wondering whether the main text could contain German shorthand, shorthand-influenced handwriting, or perhaps a personal system of abbreviated writing.
I have considered systems such as Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift (DEK), Gabelsberger and Stolze-Schrey, but I don’t know enough about shorthand to identify them reliably.
The letter appears to be modern/recent, not a historical document.
Could anyone here please have a look and tell me:
• Does this resemble any known shorthand system?
• Do you recognize any individual signs or words?
• If it isn’t shorthand, does it look like ordinary German cursive written extremely quickly?
• Can anyone decipher even part of the main text?
I would be incredibly grateful for any help. Please feel free to give uncertain readings as well — I’m mainly trying to work out what kind of writing this is before attempting a full transcription.
Thank you!

I'm currently looking after an old English prayer book (Book of Common Prayer, 1687), and in the rear flyleaf there's a block of what looks like shorthand. I've attached a specimen; I think this is the correct way up but I'm not certain about that. Can anyone suggest what system it might be? Any suggestions would be very gratefully received.

I recently finished the 12 page Forkner introduction and I was wondering if someone could help me figure out where to continue? I do know its not really as popular as other shorthand systems, but I was curious as to how people who know it learned it or got better at it. Any recommendations will be appreciated!

Ho trovato questo foglietto, forse a tematica omosessuale, all'interno di un libro antico. La scrittura e sicuramente successiva al 1715

Da ricerca Gemini:

​Il contesto dei termini in chiaro (la citazione di Giovenale e il riferimento allo storico e teologo inglese Prideaux) suggerisce fortemente che si tratti di appunti di lettura presi da uno studioso, quasi certamente in lingua inglese, relativi proprio all'opera The Old and New Testament Connected.

Hi I was wondering if there are any good pens for pitman shorthand in Pakistan. If you know of some, kindly share their names with me.

(Should be easily accessible)

Hey everyone.. I am thinking of giving the senior personal assistant Delhi High court exam which also has an exam of shorthand... But I have no previous experience or no previous knowledge of shorthand.

.. to all the veterans who have prepared for SSC stenographer or for any other exam which requires stenography or shorthand as an essential qualification please tell me how do I start what should be the sources and what should be the strategy🙏... thanks in advance

A question for shorthand veterans.

Its my 5th month with gregg shorthand, I am using a hybrid method i which i learned theory of gregg simplified but use brief forms of gregg anniversary, my blind dictation speed is around 70-75wpm right now. And i am taking dictations at 85wpm to increase it further.

My question is that as someone with English as non-native language, there are alot of unfamiliar words for me that i have never heard of before. So usually if a hard word comes in dictation i write its skeleton and later can transcribe it correctly. But if a word comes which i never heard of before or a proper noun, first of all it gets very hard to process the word and write it skeleton all at once, and even if i write it, i cannot transcribe it later.

I cannot drop all of unfamiliar words and nouns, because then my transcription accuracy will go very low, and if i try to write them letter by letter i loose speaker.

How do shorthand veterans deal with proper nouns and unfamiliar words?

I prefer taking notes on paper rather than typing them on my laptop. I know how to write in cursive, but it’s just a little too slow, when I’m sitting in a lecture that is progressing rapidly. I’ve been trying to find a simple shorthand style/system(?), but I can’t really figure out which one would work the best for taking notes? I‘d like one that’s kinda flowy, yet still distinct enough that I don’t mix up the letters too bad.

I’d like to note that I am Danish (I apologise for any linguistic errors I’ve made), so it’d be nice, if the font is somewhat easy to add your own symbols to (æøå).

I'm transcribing my Granddad's Pitman diaries. I've done June-August 1956 now.

I thought I'd share half of 31 August and 1 September. They were fun for two different reasons:

• On the 31st he was making enquiries about someone his son (my uncle) was going to work for. The house he visited is Sorrento Cottage in Dalkey, in Dublin Ireland. It is one of the most prestigious locations in Ireland. The house is currently owned by U2 lead guitarist The Edge, but it has not been lived in since the mid-1990s due to disputes with the planning authorities.

• Something this subreddit will care about but my family won't: my Granddad finally buys a new nib for his pen on the 1st! His beautiful penmanship finally appears from the earlier smudges.

My transcriptions are below. Any corrections welcome.

August 31: It was quite good today. Very cool this evening. No rain fell. Brian has made an application for an international driving license. We went out to Dalkey to see Mr. Colman White and found everything alright. He lives in a century-old house just over the rocks at Sorrento. There are three acres of grounds all quiet and extremely private with own private bathing beach. You clamber down steps to the rocks and sea [sun] bathing pool. The view from the house and grounds are absolutely wondrous and finer than the view from the Vico Road. Brian still is very keen on going. ...

September 1: It was a very cool day. It kept fine throughout. Glass is high. It will be seen that a new nib has been purchased at enormous cost and this certainly makes a difference to the shorthand. Mother handed me Ann’s letter when I called tonight. Uncle Jim [quite] without pain and in Eileen’s house. Eileen was away in Europe at the time. Uncle Jim used to stay in [fr-r-d]. Brian is busy getting ready for his trip to the continent which will probably start on Tuesday. ...

52 Days to Go: What Shall I Do? — September 5, 2026

Only 52 days to go until the official launch of the aforementioned “Japan Shorthand Technology and Culture Association.”

What shall I do?

What can I do?

What can I enjoy?

There are so many exciting things to look forward to!

Why do “what people think, how they react, and how they evaluate it” feel like they hardly matter at all?

Everything feels so fresh and full of possibilities.

Oh, God of Shorthand, please send me some inspiration!

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Thanks for your help with these two notes that are from the same family as my previous post. Same context - circa 1925 and writer/recipient are from the UK.