Just how to Write 225 Words each and every minute Having a Pen

A tutorial within the missing technology of shorthand

Being a journalist, we start many interviews by supporting my pen and asking, “Have you ever seen one of these brilliant?” No one ever has.

It is maybe not a pen that is ordinary needless to say. It’s a Sky wifi smartpen, a bit of gee-whiz technology from a business called Livescribe. Essentially, the smartpen replaces all your standard reporter’s tools. The way I always have to start with, it’s an old-fashioned pen for old-fashioned paper, so I can still scribble my notes. The smartpen can be a top-quality electronic recorder, creating a sound file for the meeting once we get along. Finally, a camera that is tiny the end of this pen simultaneously takes photos of my records when I compose.

All that given information is then drawn together by way of a microprocessor housed into the barrel of this pen. And considering that the smartpen is truly a computer, it is in a position to sync the picture up of my pay for research paper handwritten records with all the sound file. This means i will touch the end regarding the pen any place in my notebook, therefore the pen will replay the audio instantly of whatever had been being stated whenever I took that note. And as it’s WiFi enabled, the entire meeting—audio file, records, and all—is immediately uploaded to my Evernote account. It’s a small as promised.

There’s an added function i love to explain. It’s possible, We tell individuals, to have character that is optical computer software to choose the pen. Then copy and paste into your word processor if you write like a normal person, the OCR will automatically convert your handwritten notes into a text file that you can. For all reporters, here is the feature that is best, obviating the painful task of transcribing long interviews. Nonetheless it does not work for me personally, I explain, because even though I’m recording this meeting aided by the latest model Sky wifi smartpen, I’m using notes using a 19th Century technology called Gregg shorthand.

In lots of respects, Gregg is also more innovative as compared to smartpen. And, although no electronic devices or gizmos were included, it absolutely was a tremendously effective and technology that is influential almost a century. Now, it is end up being the key to my workflow on the web age.

Gregg is a real method of compressing language. You’re the device that does the decoding and encoding. As well as your mind can perform it in real-time at really, extremely high rates. To know why, you should know only a little regarding how it really works.

Gregg is simply a much simpler and much more efficient composing system than longhand English. This begins utilizing the letters by themselves. The Roman alphabet, which we used to compose English, is more complicated than is strictly required to distinguish one letter from another. To print a“b” that is lower-case for instance, calls for a lengthy, downward swing having a clockwise cycle during the base. Then, you need to select your pen to go to another letter, an extraneous action which takes up very nearly the maximum amount of time while the writing it self. Cursive (whenever ended up being the final time you heard that term?) might seem only a little faster, nonetheless it really calls for extra shots, quick ligatures in the beginning therefore the end of each and every letter. That’s a complete large amount of wasted movement, and that’s why cursive is clearly no more than 10 % quicker than printing.

In comparison, Gregg’s “letters” are much easier shapes. Here is the very first paragraph for this article printed in shorthand:

Consonants are either shallow curves or right lines; vowels are either loops or little hooks. The Gregg “b”, for example, is definitely a uncomplicated downward swing regarding the pen—a very very very long, forward-leaning curve that faces off to the right, like a available parenthesis in italics. In the event that you gauge the complexity of writing into the quantity of shots, the Gregg “b” calls for just one single swing set alongside the 4 or 5 that comprise the Roman “b.” Gregg letters require also no ligatures; each page blends seamlessly to the other people. The long, downward curve of a “b” joins the short, horizontal curve of an “r” to form a sort of right-handed fishhook in the combination “b-r”, for instance.

right Here, you can view the Gregg page “b,” then “r,” and a mix of the 2, which may represent “bring” ( more about that abbreviation in moment):

In Gregg, the simplification for the types of letters reaches its apogee in an ongoing process called “blending”. The person shots of several usually combined letter pairs are written with just one stroke that is blended. The quick, right, horizontal dash of an “n” together with long, diagonal, upward swing of the “d” join to become an extended, upward bend that represents “nd”. This not just decreases the sheer number of strokes, it eliminates the pause that is momentary to make an angle between your “n” and also the “d”. This simpleness of design—the absence of superfluous strokes—accounts for around 10 % regarding the rate of Gregg.

right Here’s “n,” hen”d the “nd” combination:

An additional benefit of Gregg is the fact that it is phonetic. Your message “bay”, for instance, is created “b-a”—the simple downward bend for the “b”, finished with all the big, counter-clockwise cycle of a “a”, so your word that is whole three letters in longhand, appears almost like an individual sloping form of the Roman “b”. Gregg eschews the parade of quiet letters, just like the “y” in “bay” that produce English so hard to master as a 2nd language.