How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen

[sj4nz]

While Gregg shorthand is great for English, its not much use for anything technical. Many of the shorthand idioms are based on the word-sound, not the word-spelling, so it's okay if you're taking notes for yourself, reading someone else's shorthand becomes an exercise in decoding the word in context because you were not there for their experience during note-taking.

If you don't stay fresh with your own shorthand, just like your own source code, you can find yourself re-reading your own work and wondering what you were thinking!? That's kind of what this pen in the article semi-solves, by having an audio recording synched with your shorthand.

[Grae]

That is precisely why the author relies on his smartpen:

"After all, shorthand—at least my shorthand—isn’t foolproof. Even though, for short stretches, I can write 120 words per minute, the average American now speaks at more than 150 words a minute, so something is inevitably lost in the translation. With my trusty Sky smartpen, though, I don’t have to worry. Most of the time, when I get around to writing the story, I can rely on my handwritten notes for short quotes and background information. But when I need a longer, verbatim quote, I can use my notes as a kind of index to find the right part of the interview, and tap there with my pen to hear the playback. No more of the forward/reverse dance with a digital recorder when it’s time to transcribe. It’s an almost flawless system."

The article isn't just about a cool old technology (though he does spend a lot of time on it), but to demonstrate the novel combination of complementary old and new technologies.

[EdwardCoffin]

My understanding is that it was not generally expected that notes taken by one person would be interpretable by another. This is what I've been told by my mother, who learned and used Pitman shorthand. She says she never had to read anyone else's notes, nor did anyone else ever have a need to read hers.

[dwd]

I always thought journalists were hopeless at reporting precise details, but when you compress your notes using such a lossy technique as this, it's not surprising that the facts can get skewed.

[vxNsr]

I got so excited when he said that it really was possible to write at 100 words a minute but then he said that it's nearly impossible to actually learn Gregg, I wonder if there's a website somewhere....

About the Livescribe: it's an okay pen but difficult to hold. and somewhat awkward because of the camera at the tip, but it could depend on the way you hold pens.

[6d0debc071]

The old manuals are on archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/1916GreggShorthandManual-5thVers...

[coldpie]

I think it's only useful to learn if you actually do a lot of writing, especially in time-sensitive situations like dictation or interviews. If it's just something you're interested in as a novelty, but you don't actually do more handwriting than a few notes during meetings at work, you're probably not going to get enough practice to have any success.

[Osmium]

I wonder how difficult it'd be to write OCR-style software for Gregg. It'd have to be more sophisticated; character recognition alone wouldn't be enough, you'd have to do a bit of Markov modelling with most probable sentences/words too. I guess it's so niche no one will ever do it, but it sounds like a fun project.

[err4nt]

I used to have a palm pilot and I LOVED the 'graffiti' input mode with the stylus. You had an alphabet of simplified shapes and it made it very easy to enter something quickly without needing to ‘hunt and peck' on a miniature keyboard for the shift key or using shift keys to change modes.

I wondered why nobody brought gesture-based inout to iOS this way. I don't care about 'handwriting recognition' of my own writing, I want a more efficient input method, even if I have to learn it and practice to be good at it. I'm not content with tapping one button for each character I want to record :S

[hrjet]

Wouldn't character recognition be sufficient for Gregg? I don't know Gregg, but from the article ti seems like the interpretation of the characters could be left to the reader.

[muaddirac]

I don't see the utility of shorthand anymore. If you're just taking short notes, you don't need to write 225wpm...and if you've recorded everything, then you can listen to the recording later and take notes or type up a transcript verbatim.

It would seem better to learn a stenography system so you don't waste time inputting actual text, which surely you would need to do anyway? (How is the time the author saves writing in shorthand not negated by the time it takes her to type it up afterwards?) I guess if you knew shorthand and steno, you could do everything pretty quickly.

[jonnathanson]

There are specific professions in which it comes in handy. Journalism is one of them. Every now and then, you'll encounter someone who is willing to go on the record, but for whatever reason, doesn't feel comfortable being taped. (And by "every now and then," I mean somewhat greater than half the time.) And a lot of people are put off by the act of typing into a keyboard or tablet while you're speaking to them, even if you're making eye contact all the while.

I'd say any profession in which you're on the go and often have to take notes by pen and paper, shorthand is a necessity. This is doubly true in my case, as a partial disability in my right hand makes longform pen-writing a PITA.

[randallsquared]

He only types up small portions of (apparently) long interviews, for quotes. In this case, the combination of shorthand and the camera and software is like a jump-to-where-I-mean feature for audio recordings, which sounds amazing, frankly, for this use case.

[0xdeadbeefbabe]

If you have time to learn 200 WPM stenography then you have a lot going for you, but why not become a professional tennis player or a concert pianist instead? The promise of coding or writing at the speed of thought is actually not so good, it's like that horror story of the monkey's paw actually. Of course if you can't speak, a talking steno would be ideal for participating in a conversation.

[ZenPro]

Good luck with that as a Court Reporter.

Almost all journalists start out at regional or local publications covering Courts. It is considered the apprenticeship of mainstream news journalism.

[sp332]

Because a small notebook & pen is half the size of a keyboard, quieter, and doesn't need to be charged every day?

[bane]

Shorthand systems also exist in other languages. I'm aware that there was something called a "fast writing" system in Korea and a version of Pitman-Graham in Japan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand#Modern_Japan

[ThrustVectoring]

For programmers, I don't think shorthand is the right technology to learn - stenographic typing has the same kind of advantages and speed, and directly inputs to the computer.

Learning shorthand does make stenographic typing easier to learn (and vice-versa), since it's the same sort of syllable-based contraction.

[fsiefken]

For a stenographic typing solution that can work on a pc check Plover: http://plover.stenoknight.com/

[jamesli]

The shorthand is based on sounds, not spellings. So the difficulty is that the brain has to translate spelling into sounds first, which is a great barrier to overcome.

There is a similar fast writing system (速写）in Chinese. I tried to learn it for a year while I was in high school, but gave it up eventually. Other than the extra difficulties of logograms vs phonograms, another barrier is that one need to translate the fast writings back to "normal" ones for easy reads later. Many times it is so hard to tell what I actually scribbled down.

[scrollaway]

> So the difficulty is that the brain has to translate spelling into sounds first, which is a great barrier to overcome.

It doesn't look like it's meant to be used to copy written text, but to take notes that have already been spoken, which is exactly the opposite to what you're describing - When I speak and you take notes, you essentially turn sounds into spelling.

[fardoche]

I remember finding a textbook on Gregg shorthand in my grandmother's attic when I was 10 years old. It fascinated me (secret writing! esoteric knowledge!) and I spent a few afternoons practicing and inventing my own abbreviations, even using it to take notes in school once or twice, but my family bought a home computer not long after that, and all my energy went into learning BASIC.

[malloreon]

I was really hoping this article would end with the author revealing the Livescribe pen could expand Gregg shorthand written with it into standard characters on a computer.

[pbhjpbhj]

It would have to be a author-guided OCR though as the same symbols can represent different words.

[varkson]

Wait so that wasn't the point of using it? The author mentions custom OCR so I assumed he was using some sort of Gregg OCR solution.

[keithpeter]

http://www.nctj.com/journalism-qualifications/shorthand-teel...

UK journalists still do teeline shorthand. I used to have to help upload practice dictations for a colleague who taught teeline.

Pitman's shorthand was the one used by secretaries when they took dictation. I was fascinated my my Mum's shorthand books as a nipper.

[jimbobimbo]

This reminded me about my Pocket PC, which used to have a writing recognition mode that was a cross between Palm's stokes and regular writing (I could've been a 3rd-party keyboard). It was more accurate than regular writing recognition that Pocket PC had and thus faster for me to use. To this day my handwriting is altered by the way I was writing on that keyboard...

[eggy]

I have been using the Echo Livescribe pen for 4 years now, and it has saved me on many occasions. I taught myself Quickscript before I ever had the pen, but because of the lack of OCR for it on the pen, I don't really use it much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quikscript

[ChuckMcM]

Loved the exposition on Gregg shorthand, I tried and failed to master it in college sadly, but it also gave me new respect for the archivists who decipher notes on the margins of older texts, as those seem to be in their own shorthand, sometimes invented by the author of the margin note.

[egypturnash]

"As a journalist, I begin most interviews by..." ...talking about my cool pen and Gregg Shorthand for a couple of minutes. Well that's a great way to spend the possibly limited time your interviewee has to talk to you.

[brandonbloom]

When hand-held tape recorders were new, I'm sure many journalists opened with "Have you ever seen one of these?" shortly before asking "Is it OK if I record this conversation?". Seems like a perfectly reasonable 30 second exchange to ensure that the interviewee is informed and comfortable.

[wpietri]

When I do user interviews, I always try to talk a little bit at the beginning about something not directly relevant. It's especially good when I can offer something about myself; if I open up to people, they'll often open up more to me. It may look like a waste of time, but the better results say otherwise.

[sikhbeats]

> Gregg eschews the parade of silent letters, like the “y” in “bay” that make English so difficult to learn as a second language.

I stopped reading here. I can't take this drivel seriously.

[thrill]

srsly?