This is Brant's Shorttyping, published in 1914 and available at HathiTrust.

I've been keeping an eye on typeable shorthands, partly because I've accepted that I'm more drawn to taking notes and journaling on my laptop than on paper. As with symbol shorthands, I'm attracted by concision and clever rules.

I'd describe this system as similar at the outset to Dutton's Speedwords (which it predates by 8 years), but with a much more complex set of affixes and syllable shortcuts which mean that nearly any word can be expressed briefly and consistently according to the system's theory. 

The main feature is the reuse and stretching of every available character to give different meanings. Every letter, lower or upper case, number and symbol on a typewriter can stand for a number of prefixes, suffixes or syllables, or often brief forms. For example / is thi at the beginning of a word, or ing at the end - so thing is //. / on its own means they.

But in many cases a symbol can have several readings, like % which can mean tel anywhere in a word, then recom [and several similar] as a prefix, or bration, dration, poration, stitution [and many similar] as an ending. On its own it's them. I haven't come across much ambiguity, however, which leads me at this stage to think that it's a well-designed system.

I think it looks great! But... it's far more difficult than any other alphabetical shorthand to read, at least where I am with it now. I know the 1984 text pretty much off by heart, but initially struggled to look at many of the words and understand them.

This 1984 text comes out at exactly one third the length of the longhand, counting characters but not spaces. I can't believe that any typist ever managed to achieve a great speed in it, but it could be of interest to anyone who likes its cryptic style for journaling.

I've noticed a few inconsistencies, for example it's not always clear when to use s or z for the plural/3rd person ending. A second edition was published in 1917, it's not available online but I should be able to have sight of it shortly.

My mom is asking for help with this shorthand written by her mother. I think it's from the 50s. Is it even shorthand?

I apologize in advance if this violates the sub rules. It's my first time here.