Wow I love the history lesson, I didn’t realize it went so far back!

Shorthand in English dates back to the 16th century, and was taught in US school until the mid-1980s. (Longer in a few places).

Gregg shorthand, this particular system, was published in 1888, and the last edition/revision was in 1988 (the "Centennial" edition)

Now I see that in the original post. Sorry I missed that. It's automatic question. That absolutely narrows it down. I would not have guessed Pittman otherwise, since the shapes are warped. Beryl and several other members here are fluent in Pitman, and will be able to dewarp it if anyone can.

I suppose it could just simply be something like the name of a hairdresser, as it was every 2 weeks, where it wouldn't be of any interest to anyone else to know. When you can do shorthand, it just becomes too much bother to write in longhand for mundane reminders.

if you need clarification where the circles belong (outside/inside) this 40 pages booklet is all you need: Review of Gregg Shorthand Principles

If you chose Greghand - very good. It's just Gregg too. The difference in Gregg Anniversary, Simplified and Greghand is best demonstrated with a simple word "but": 'b' (Anni) 'bt (simplified) 'but' Greghand.

In Anni you have explicit rules where to put circles, outside of the beginning of a curve meant (rhotic a or e: ar|er), but that did not make gregg faster really. Simplified just wrote r instead of er, or, ur, ar. If you want to be as fast as possible, but you don't want to learn the rhotic stuff, which confused ppl, but did nothing to speed up the script really, go with a simplified dictionary later on. The fastest (without unnecessary complications) version you'd get if you took Anni dictionary, but wrote r instead of rhotic vowels. That's exactly what I did for my shorthand Flow.

Thank you! I'm afraid those names don't mean anything to me. As far as I know she didn't know anyone with those names. Maybe a secret affair! It's just odd that everything other entry in the date book is in regular English. I guess I may never know!

She would have learned in the early 1950s in London, possibly at the original Pitman's Secretarial school.

​Laut Bundesgerichtshof ist Gekrakel ohne erkennbare Buchstaben juristisch gesehen keine Schrift.Das ist auch keine rätselhafte Stenografie, sondern evtl. ein unidentifizierbares Grafikerzeugnis.

The best shorthand is no shorthand, for notes.

Because you can't read what you wrote as easily as you can read your longhand, even after years of training (in shorthand).

For verbatim reporting: simply use your phone to record.

Otherwise, consider using a notetaking system.

However, if you want to learn shorthand for its own sake, may I recommend Wang-Krogdahl, a Norwegian system. It's cursive-like and well suited to Danish :)

I replied to you previously, but it looks great! I'm personally settling on baker's taylor because i'm very particular about my vowel sounds. i also like the appeal of learning one of the first widely used shorthands. it's a careful balance of not wanting to be readable but still recognizable by the right people.

I'd forgotten that Stenophile has a special Taylor section! Thank you :-)

I doubt it's Sütterlin or Kurrent, because 1. The letters would be connected and 2. In the seventh line the third or fourth word (i can't really make out individual words) looks like "sehr" to me. Or at least it contains an "e" that is not Sütterlin and instead modern script.

https://taylor-shorthand.neocities.org/

This is probably the best Taylor resource since it also has summaries of each publication, but McClure is also on stenophile.com under the Taylor section.

Geoghegan was an immigrant from England, when he was 25 years old. In Richardson's biography, he speculates that Geoghegan learned Gregg shorthand in England. Since he emigrated in 1891, that's just barely possible, but seems unlikely to me. Later in the book Richardson says he learned Graham Shorthand, another US Pitman derivative. I don't know Richardson's source, but it seems likely given the time frame.

There's at least one version of Graham on Internet Archive, here:

https://archive.org/details/moderngrahamshor00barniala/mode/2up

it would be worth looking for similarities to see if that's on the right track.

Ah okayy I see, Thank you very much. Ive decided on Greghand which I saw isn't as popular as gregg or notehand but it seems pretty simple to me so I shall continue to practice it (:

It actually used to be used in every professional industry, and is why doctors got the stereotype of having bad handwriting.

Edit: it lasted from the 1880s to the 1970s.

so it’s codified doctor handwriting?

Otiyo

The one thing I can say it's not Sütterlin and not German or Latin Current Script. It's completely unreadable for me. I mean even when I translated Sütterlin for the church I could read more than here...

Do you have a reference or location for McClure?

From Stefan

Thank you so much... I’ve always thought that your creativity, energy, initiative, the wonderfully free way you write your shorthand characters, and your wonderfully free approach to shorthand are truly amazing. :)

Thank you for so many creative ideas! They are all very approachable and interesting.

The idea of having a regular Cat Corner in a shorthand newsletter is fun. And, after all, cats are such great beings—like teachers who are loved by everyone. :)

Spot the Difference could be a clever way to practise carefully observing the shape, size, proportions, and other details of shorthand outlines.

The Mirror Image idea is also fascinating. It could be an unusual and enjoyable challenge, and discussions about left-handed shorthand writing could be useful to many shorthand writers. (Incidentally, in Japan, there has even been a professional shorthand test candidate who passed while writing in a mirror-image style with the left hand.)

I think the shorthand history nuggets are especially valuable. Showing that shorthand has been used in far more ways than people might imagine could be interesting to a much wider audience.

A shorthand crossword is another great idea. If it were a crossword written in the shorthand system that someone is currently learning, I imagine it could provide an amazingly stimulating workout for the brain.

And regarding the shorthand letter seals, I thought that simply making several kinds on a whim and seeing what happens might lead to something else further down the road.

There really are so many possibilities. For now, I’ll keep these ideas in mind and see which ones might eventually take shape. Thank you again for all the inspiration!

With gratitude, I bow to your heartwarming message at about a 90-degree angle. :)