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.<p>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.
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....<p>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.
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.
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.<p>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.
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.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand#Modern_Japan" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand#Modern_Japan</a>
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.<p>Learning shorthand does make stenographic typing easier to learn (and vice-versa), since it's the same sort of syllable-based contraction.
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.<p>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.
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.
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.
<a href="http://www.nctj.com/journalism-qualifications/shorthand-teeline" rel="nofollow">http://www.nctj.com/journalism-qualifications/shorthand-teel...</a><p>UK journalists still do teeline shorthand. I used to have to help upload practice dictations for a colleague who taught teeline.<p>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.
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...
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.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quikscript" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quikscript</a>
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.
"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.
> Gregg eschews the parade of silent letters, like the “y” in “bay” that make English so difficult to learn as a second language.<p>I stopped reading here. I can't take this drivel seriously.