Ever seen a steno sit and take down notes that the boss goes on dictating with the pencil on a notepad moving swiftly. Moving to a closer range you’d see that the notes that she has made are hardly comprehensible and make no sense to you as they look as merely curves drawn in many shapes. Before you jump to any conclusions about the steno playing up with her job let me tell you that she’s actually using stenography popularly called as ‘shorthand’.
Stenography, or often called shorthand, is any writing system that uses symbols or shortcuts that can be made to represent letters or the alphabet, words or phrases. (Stenography is from the Greek words meaning “narrow writing”). The purpose of Shorthand is to be able to write approximately as fast as someone speaks, in order to take down every thing that is said.Systems of shorthand were in use in the ancient world.
Beginning in 63 BC the speeches of the Roman orator Cicero were taken down in shorthand by his secretary. Marcus Tullius Tiro. The Tironian system was introduced into Roman schools and was used for centuries in the early Christian Church.Modern shorthand systems originated and developed in England. Timothy Bright introduced the first system in his book ‘Characterie: An Arte of Shorte, Swifte, and Secrete Writing by Character.’
Thirteen more such systems are known to have been introduced over the next 50 years. The early methods were called orthographic, or alphabetic, because they followed normal spelling. They did, however omit silent letters. The first teacher to make a break with the orthographic system was Philip Gibbs in 1736. His method was phonetic, based on distinguishing between long and short vowels. The two most widely used shorthand systems are phonetic: Pitman and Gregg.
Isaac Pitman published his ‘Stenographic Sound Hand’ in 1837. He classified all the sounds in English and arranged his method of writing accordingly. Pitman characters have simple geometric forms, and the curves are part of a true circle. Some letters are written with a light stroke, some with a heavy (shaded) stroke. The light and shaded strokes of the same form usually represent closely related sounds. Gregg based the curved forms of his alphabet on the parts of an ellipse instead of the circle. This gives Gregg shorthand a flowing cursive form of writing like longhand. Gregg has no shaded outlines. It does not use position and may be written on unruled paper.The earliest recorded instance of shorthand being used is the system used by the historian Xenophon to write the memoirs of Socrates. The art of shorthand died out in the middle Ages because of its imagined associations with witchcraft.
Samuel Pepys was an English naval administrator and diarist. His Diary (1660 - 69) is a unique record of the daily life of the period, the historical events of the Restoration, the manners and scandals of the court, naval administration, and Pepys's own interests, weaknesses, and intimate feelings. Written in shorthand, it was not deciphered until 1825.Thus these codes used do simplify the work of man and do help him to save both time and energy. Also as only a trained person could decode it the message would be safe from the hands of superfluous people who might otherwise tamper and distort the message.
A unique system like shorthand hence finds many uses in the routine jobs of the office. It can also be used to make confidential notes which the writer would not want to reveal to each and every reader. Who knows might be you could even write your diary in shorthand to keep the things written a mystery like Pepys did!
