Day 159 - Learn Shorthand (Gregg)

Date: June 14th, 2010

If u kan rd ths, ure <30 yrs old.

And if you write like I did in my example, you're less than 20 years old.  See, the internet and texting have created this phenomenon of treating bad grammar and misspellings like some kind of etymological revelation.  The result is that about half the people who grew up when I did have become so militant about grammar that we won't even send a simple text message without proper spelling and punctuation.  ThE oThEr HaLf Of ThE pEoPlE sTaRtEd DoInG tHiS.  I think it might be a protest of some kind, but one cannot be too sure.



That being said, when I have politely (ok, rudely) chastised my friends for their bad internet grammar (needless to say, I fell down on the militant side of things), I've gotten generally the same response.  Some version of the argument goes like this: its just the new shorthand; everybody knows what I meant.

It got me thinking about shorthand, in general.  My grandmother spent some thirty odd years as a legal secretary in Indianapolis before she retired.  One of the things I never got a chance to ask her about was shorthand (like, real, honest-to-goodness, in person, written down shorthand) and how it work.  Now, dry your eyes there kids, cause I'm not trying to get all mushy.  The reason I never got a chance to ask is that it wasn't something I particularly cared about.  I did get a chance to ask bout her life, how to quilt and, of course, what her top three most under-appreciated alterna-rock albums of all time were.

I decided, partially in tribute and partially in the vain hope that I'd be able to take notes faster at work, that I would learn shorthand.  Turns out, old fashioned shorthand is just an earlier bastardization of the English language.  There are three types.  I went with the one that didn't make my eyes bleed when I read the online description of it.  That would be "Gregg" shorthand.

It ignores spelling completely and goes based on phonetics.  In other words, the swishes and symbols you use aren't based on how things should be spelled or how grammar should form a sentence - they'd spelled exactly as they sound.  It makes sense - fewer symbols to remember as you transcribe things and less specificity of pen movements and whatnot.  Even so, my illusions about the glory of pre-computer language may or may not have been forever shattered in that one moment.

I also found that it was incredibly difficult to distinguish between different marks.  There are short and long flourishes.  They mean literally completely different things and are, in no way, related to one another.  If you read it correctly, it makes sense.  If you guess wrong, it is completely incoherent.  "Excuse me, Mr. Farnsworth, yes, this is Sheila over in legal, mmhmm.  My boss, Mr. Wavering, he wanted me to let you know that your client has until yesterday to file his after-party cherry dance polio notion.  No sir, I have no idea what that means.  He said you'd understand."

I definitely gained an appreciation of one of the skills my grandmother needed every day at her job.  Even so, I think I'll stick to printing my letters for now.  Besides, its only a matter of time until my fingers are replaced by tiny computers anyway.