Mods, I think this is more FQ than IMHO, but feel free to move as you see fit.
At work, I go to meetings . . . Lots of meetings. Some of 'em are informative, with some of 'em are about as exciting as Ben Stein slowly reading names & numbers from the phonebook. Between both kinds, I’m usually scribbling furiously to get details down of who said what, and the details of conversation contextuals. Ideas and conversation happens so fast that my notes usually come out looking like Pablo Picasso ‘n’ Jackson Pollock had a love child.
I realized yesterday, on a flight, that the lady sitting next to me was reading notes in undecipherable slashes and ticks . . . I didn’t ask, but it looked like shorthand, which could be pretty dang useful for me–somthing I probably should have looked into years ago.
Do you guys take notes in shorthand writing? Would you recommend any system in particular? Are there any that are easier to use than others? If there’s something quicker than typical English in trying to capture conversations, I’m interested.
My mom continued to use her secretarial college training shorthand throughout her entire life, most notably when entering things in the appointment book she didn’t want any of us kids to see. She resented having been taught Pittman shorthand, which she said was much harder to learn than the Gregg system her secretarial college switched to the year after she graduated somewhere around 1949.
I suspect it would be easier for you to learn to type faster than to become proficient at shorthand.
Summarizing what people say in order to take content notes helps me pay attention and helps me understand better. I can usually take notes fast enough, even at hectic meetings, because i intentionally summarize.
Good point. Taking shorthand means you often barely remember what you’ve written, you’re too busy transcribing. When I was studying court reporting, my instructor said that she often had little idea what she’d just typed.
I used to be able to type fast but some injuries have slowed me down. Another longer story, but I can’t bring computers into many of my meetings. We’re limited to pads & paper.
Tripler
Thankfully, my writin’ hand is still at 100%. It’s also my coffee drinkin’ hand.
I took Gregg shorthand in college in the late 70s. I learned it easily because I loved calligraphy and writing. I worked as a secretary from the time I graduated college until I retired last year, and I used my shorthand every single day. Once bosses stopped dictating letters in person, I still used it to take notes and to jot down stream-of-consciousness requests and orders from my superiors. I still use it at home if I’m taking down something during a phone call that I need to remember later.
I took a shorthand class in high school, but it didn’t stick. You’re supposed to use certain strokes for phonetic sounds, and I kept trying to use a stroke for each letter to spell out the word properly. Counter productive.
However, I did learn to speed write in my work as a judge’s assistant. One of our primary functions is to summarize each proceeding in a case in a minute order, so getting down the important stuff was a requirement. We had some common symbols we’d use for regularly-used words in courtrooms (The Pi symbol for"plaintiff" and and a wee triangle for “defendant,” e.g.) but we mostly evolved our own methods.
Mine was to drop most of the vowels and only write enough of the actual word to remind me of what was actually said. So “motion” became “mt,” “Court” became “ct,” “denies” became “dn” and so on. If you work in a field where many terms are repeatedly used, this might work for you.
It is not shorthand but many smartphones are able to transcribe anything they hear.
I have used it at conventions to transcribe what is being said and it works really well. I just set the phone on my lap to listen and that was it. You need to do some clean up but not as much as you’d think (although industry specific jargon can get a little garbled).
You can even still take notes by hand while doing it but now can ease up and match your notes to the transcription afterwards. No need to learn a new skill.
I do not know shorthand but my dad was a lawyer and his legal secretaries used shorthand and accuracy was paramount. Not to mention stenographers in court and during depositions. Not sure how they do the voodoo they do but they are accurate. They have to be.
I used to know some Gregg shorthand as a child…not for any reason other than being a dork. Never got very good at it, though.
I take very quick notes by using a handful of “tricks” that are probably well known to many others. Leaving out vowels when possible, abbreviating most conjunctions and the like.
And basic organization in an outline form…assuming the speaker is not just extemporizing some word salad for the lolz.
Fortunately, I don’t have to take notes in that setting much anymore…the occasional training or mandatory refresher of skills on the job in a “classroom” (well…room, anyway!) setting. As often as not without the “teacher” using ppt slides…sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Also, just having a very economical quick style of handwriting helps me quite a bit…some say it looks like a scrawl…but it is in fact extremely regular in terms of letter shapes, spacing, and so forth. I also don’t snore, so people are wrong in that regard as well.
Oh yes, this as well…all kinds of abbreviations from different fields I studied/read in…likely no body else would much understand them, but I do, so that’s enough for my uses.
My dad used to use shorthand to take meeting notes, but that would have been in the 69’s and 70’s, before modern onveniences. But then, he also (tried to?) learn Finnish and Korean, so had a certain adeptness for that sort of stuff. I suppose it’s something you use if you need. I was able to take notes in college writing normally. The real reinforced learning experience was transcribing those quick note sheets into a tidy format in a notebook after.
There’s the bit I believe was first mentioned in Rolling Stone magazine and then parodied in the movie Real Genius. One day students come to class and the lecturer has left a note beside a tape recorder “Sorry - Can’t make it today - please press play.” The next day, same thing, a couple of students simply left cassette decks recording this lecture. A few days later, it’s a lecture hall where a tape deck is playing to an empty hall full or recording cassette decks…
Dictation machines and other recording devices became small and inexpensive and diminished the value of shorthand. Early word processors were right around the corner. I remember people studying shorthand in the 60s. By the 70s it’s use was disappearing.
Like a couple people have commented, I also took a “notehand” class in HS. (It was one semester of typing and one of “notehand.” I was one of only two males in a class of 26.) I used it for about ten years, but mainly for jotting notes to myself during boring meetings. It kept the clients from seeing me jot down “tomatoes, bread, milk, beer” while I was supposed to be listening to their problems.
If you want something like this but a little more formalized, looking into Stenoscript ABC Shorthand or Speedwriting. I learned a bit of the former from Family Circle Magazine back in the late 80s, and I still use aspects of it in my notetaking. It’s easier to learn than symbolic forms of shorthand, it can be even used while typing, and it’s easy to implement a little bit at a time into your notetaking. It doesn’t have nearly the speed of symbolic shorthand, but it’s a nice middle ground.
I know a secretary who explained to me that to get the job she absolutely had to demonstrate a level of speed and accuracy in both typing and shorthand. She is retired now, but it wasn’t that long ago.
Well, if it’s from Family Circle, it’s got to be good!
I’m joking…that does sound somewhat familiar to a system I was reading about a while ago.
Many thanks for the good tip!
(TBH, my new obsession is with this computer program called Obsidian…my three bedroom apartment is just about stuffed to the rafters with notes, notebooks, loose papers, books, photocopies…so I’m trying to adopt a kind of Zettelkasten style of notetaking with this program.
But…I always have pen/pencil and notebook with me, so one can imagine for a non-permaphone citizen that the old ways perdure.)
I do much the same, when I take notes in court, and your abbreviations are surprisingly close to mine. As a lawyer, I’ve also seen medical records in litigation cases, and have had to ask my ex-wife (a doctor) what the abbreviations in the records mean. For example, “Pt”? “Patient,” of course. Naturally, I never asked her about the specifics of the patient records, or her professional opinion of the matter. That would be unethical. I just asked her to explain the abbreviations I saw.
I do the same thing at the racetrack. I’ve developed my own shorthand with which I mark up my Racing Form. For example, I’ll note “3 Dmr, 6f, F&M 3↑ nw3/L, Clm $20K.” Which, translated, means “The third race at Del Mar is a six furlong race, for three-year-old and older fillies and mares, non-winners of three in their lives. It’s a claiming race, and the claim price is $20,000.”
It’s fun to develop your own code with which to take notes.
