Where is shorthand used

Secretaries, by default, get paid to do the organising and recording — and the recording of information, and then transmitting it accurately from one place to another, is one of the prime responsibilities of a PA or secretary.

After all, precision is vital for any respectable reporter, and if your story is inaccurate or a vital piece of information has been muffled in the tape, you could end up in trouble with interviewees, readers and even the law.

When conducting an interview with someone involved in a distressing case, shorthand is again, the preferred method. In addition, with recording equipment being banned from courtrooms, journalists will always use shorthand in the courts to report on events.

No, not for crimes against shorthand — journalists are required to keep their notes for three years by law, so they can refer to them if their quotes are ever called into question. Imagine how one journalist felt when Real Madrid footballer Cristiano Ronaldo won damages from the Telegraph, after quotes published about him were deemed to be inaccurate. Indeed, said journalist would definitely benefit from a Pitman Teeline refresher course!

So, let us consider how a modern PA enhances business productivity by bringing the skill of shorthand to the office. With the fast pace of the business world today, everyone would benefit from the ability to take shorthand notes. For the PA, however, shorthand is a must. Whether working for an accountant or a zoologist, a PA has to be prepared to listen to, to record and act upon an enormous amount of information daily.

What office skill could make this task easier than shorthand? To learn shorthand takes perseverance, dedication and time. But then the same could apply to most skills.

And, if skills were easy to learn, then there would be no skill, as everyone would be doing it. It may be that shorthand is the differentiator that makes all the difference.

So few PAs now do shorthand, if you can offer it to your employer, then you certainly stand out from the crowd. Last week, one of my former students went for a second interview as a PA to the FD of high-street bank.

At interview, she was able to state quite confidently that she wrote shorthand at 80 words per minute. He then took the Gregg shorthand system to the United States, where it has since become the most popular form of shorthand. Another well-known form of shorthand writing is Teeline. It is one of the newer systems as it was developed in This system got quite a lot of popularity in the British commonwealth, where it is often taught to journalists.

Firstly, you need to choose which system you want to learn. Consider how much time you have to learn the system, as well as how fast you want to be able to write. Some of the quicker systems of shorthand are newer versions of Pitman and Gregg shorthand. If you have limited time, the quicker versions of shorthand to learn are Gregg Diamond Jubilee and Pitman If you master this form of shorthand, you should be able to write words per minute.

This system uses thick and thin strokes to represent different sounds, so you will need a steel-tipped pen to write this type of shorthand. The system also uses a lot of dots and dashes. This system indicates vowels with circles, and there is a heavy amount of symbols to memorize.

While it may take a long time to learn, this system will allow you to write over words per minute once you have mastered it. This is a form of shorthand that is based on the forms of the alphabet. It involves writing smaller vowels and consonants and focusing on writing essential letters. This form of shorthand is also often taught to journalists.

Once you have chosen a system, you can start gathering resources to learn how to use it. One of the best places to start would be the internet. Look for text and video tutorials on how to use the system as well as practice examples. Some great YouTube channels that provide tutorials on shorthand include Shorthandly and Teeline Online.

Other places you could look include local libraries, bookstores, and online bookstores. Because many shorthand books may no longer be in print, many bookstores may not supply them. In this case, it would be great to check out libraries as often libraries keep older books as well as newer books.

They may also include tests so that you can check your progress. Finally, you may want to look for a shorthand dictionary, which will show you exactly how to write different words in shorthand.

Before you start practising shorthand, it is important to note that it will probably take a while before you get the hang of it. If ever you hear of claims that you can learn shorthand in a few hours, you should not take them too seriously.

When you start practising, make sure that you take the time to master the shorthand symbols before trying to build up your speed. Doing so will ensure that you do not make too many mistakes from the beginning. It is also important to remember that your speed will build up as you become more comfortable with the system. Next, it will be important to make sure that you practice regularly.

Do a few short sessions each day and make sure to practice writing letters and words repeatedly. You could also test yourself with dictation exercises. This means recording yourself and writing down the words that you spoke using shorthand. To save time, you can learn an easier shorthand method. Consider learning speed writing or stenoscript, which use the ordinary alphabet.

It enables secretaries to transcribe meetings and dictated letters. Newspaper reporters can get down details of court case proceedings or interviews. But, in an age of electronic voice recording and instant tweeting of events, is shorthand becoming obsolete? The UK vocational education group City and Guilds says there's been "a steady decrease in the number of people taking shorthand courses over the past 10 years".

Although it's reluctant to release what it says is commercially sensitive information, it adds that "technical solutions", such as voice recording, are the "main cause for the decline". Who still writes that stuff? The art of shorthand doesn't just have one foot in the grave, it has the other planted firmly on a banana peel. But shorthand is still mandatory in some professions.

The National Council for the Training of Journalists insists trainees achieve a written speed of words per minute to pass its diploma. It remains "indispensable for any court reporter, and a vital skill for journalists in all sectors who need an easily accessible and permanent note of every conversation in their working day", the organisation insists. It's three times quicker to type out shorthand notes than to listen back to audio recordings, says Mary Sorene, secretary of the British Institute of Verbatim Reporters.

It's also illegal to make audio or video recordings of most proceedings in UK courts, although this type of coverage has been allowed in English councils since last year. But there are several types. It's based on a combination of outlines representing individual letters. Some sounds, usually vowels, are removed to aid speed. For example, the word "father" will involve writing simply a letter "f" and an elongated "t" representing the "ther" sound.

As prefixes, these letters can be either attached to or detached from the word. These forms can also be added together to create longer words. Not only are the letters uncomplicated and simply joined, there are fewer of them to write. Here's "it will be" on the first line, with "I have been" below it:.

And there are literally thousands of these phrases in Gregg shorthand. There you have it: a short course in the technology that made the Irishman John Robert Gregg an American tycoon in the first half of the 20th Century.

By the time he died, in , Gregg presided over an empire that reached from his headquarters on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan into almost every school, business and courthouse in the country. While he was fundamentally a publishing magnate—Gregg Publishing put out hundreds of textbooks, dictionaries, study guides, magazines, and shorthand versions of classical literature—John Robert Gregg also oversaw a national infrastructure of certification agencies, business schools, and testing facilities that endorsed the skills of all professional shorthand writers.

If you wanted to be an executive secretary, you needed a certificate from Gregg saying you qualified at words per minute. If you wanted to be a court reporter, you had to demonstrate you could write an astonishing words per minute with better than 98 percent accuracy.

Altogether, millions of people passed through Gregg training and the Gregg certification system. For nearly a century, Gregg was an essential part of American society. As recently as the s, almost every high school in the country taught Gregg. Certainly, every business school and most colleges offered Gregg-certified shorthand courses.

The Dictaphone and other recording devices made verbatim note taking less and less important in the office. In a time when they were denied careers in fields like the law or medicine, the smartest, most talented women often ended up as secretaries or executive assistants and became gifted shorthand practitioners.

In the s and s, as these women began to move on to better opportunities, those left behind never became quite as fast or skilled at the complexities of Gregg.