In today’s world, taking notes is as easy as the push of a few buttons. Plenty of apps on your will allow you to record audio and even take written notes for you. However, the technology we have today wasn’t always around, and not so long ago, most people had to take notes by hand.
So in the past, people came up with systems for taking notes in real-time that would allow them to capture everything a speaker was saying without skipping a beat. This form of notetaking is what’s called “shorthand.”
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, shorthand was invented by the Greek historian Xenophon. But, it wasn’t until the Roman Empire that this system was popularly used to take down notes as quickly as someone could speak. The Latin shorthand system was put to use for over a thousand years before it nearly disappeared during the Middle Ages.
After a long hiatus, shorthand started gaining popularity once again during the Victorian Era. It was widely used during the Reformation to notate Bible translations quickly. Eventually, a more modern version of shorthand was developed as the demand for stenographers increased during the Industrial Revolution.
In 1837, Sir Isaac pitman invented a modern version of shorthand and his brought introduced the system to America in 1852.
While the Pitman style was very popular in Britain, it was eventually replaced in the US by the style of John Robert Gregg, who invented Light-Line Phonography in 1888, which would later become known as Gregg Shorthand.
The term long hand is associated with long strokes used to write out words, while shorthand is designed to reduce letters down to their simpliest forms. This made it much easier to take notes and document real-time events much faster. Because shorthand looks nearly nothing like the word or words it represents, it’s easy to mistake it for some kind of ancient written language.
This is because of the various loops and dots that shorten the traditional method of writing consonants and vowels. In fact, many people mistake it for languages such as Arabic.
With Gregg’s shorthand, people were able to write down 280 words after mastering it. And believe it or not, the practice is not quite obsolete, as it’s still used in medical, legal, and secretarial professions.
You can also watch a brief video showing Gregg Shorthand in action below.
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Sources:
- “This Strange Script Was Invented To Take Notes Easier, But To Many It’s Unrecognizable” Apost.