However, Martin J. Dupraw at his peak handwrote at 260 wpm with a 99.69 percent accuracy at the National Shorthand Reporters’ Association championships, using Gregg shorthand.
There are many different forms of shorthand, also called stenography. Some of the most propular are Gregg, Teeline and Pitman. Most shorthand is based on phonetics, or sound of the word.
According to Eric Lee, author of “The not complete-idiot’s guide to: Alternative Handwriting and Shorthand Systems for Dummies” webpage, the English language has approximately 32-50 sounds in speech and only 26 letters to write them out. On top of that, we have multiple ways to write a single sound (such as too, two and to) and sometimes multiple sounds for a single spelling (such as through, dough and slough).
It used to be that shorthand was taught for occupations like secretaries and journalists. However, I’ve never had a class as a journalism student that actually taught a system of shorthand. Some students develop their own version of shorthand, nowhere near as sophisticated or efficient as Gregg shorthand. I collected some samples of some shorthand from my fellow students, as well as their thoughts on it.
The phrase they are all writing is “Haikus are easy. But sometimes they don’t make sense. Refrigerator.”
"I love my shorthand. I invented it in high school when I was working with the high school paper. It basically consists of 'Don't write vowels, and if the word is really long, only write the first three or four letters.'"-Victoria Billings, MD reporter
"I live for shorthand. It's amazing. My shorthand isn't probably traditional shorthand, and it really just looks like horrible chicken scratch …(One of the football coaches) was watching me as I was interviewing him and I was doing my shorthand and he stopped and he was like 'Can you read that?' And I was like 'Don't worry I know exactly what you just said and read it back to him verbatim. I think he was just kind of surprised because it looks like nothing, it looks like just scribbles." – Leticia Rodriguez, MD editor-in-chief
"I should work on it more as I study in my senior year. I fall back a lot on recording and dictating, and transcribing tapes just so I can get the right quotes … I also like to be more engaged when I interview so it's a lot easier when I'm not scribbling away."-Catherine Borgeson, MD reporter
"I'm terrible at it, that's why I stick to my voice recorder. My handwriting is almost nearly impossible to read on a regular basis when I'm taking notes for classes, so creating a shorthand system doesn't really seem up my alley. So I decided just to stick with the voice recorder … It's more like hieroglyphics than anything."- Brian De Los Santos, MD Sports editor
This is the shorthand of one of the journalism professors, Bill Loving. He also didn't learn any formal shorthand but developed his own.
For those who are curious, this is Gregg shorthand for "refrigerator".
