Shorthand

I have made two new year's resolutions this year.

1. More exercise (same as last year, but this time I mean it, again).

2. Learn shorthand.

And it's the second of these that this post is about. Let's start with the why.

My handwriting is terrible. It always has been. Completely illegible. It's not that I cannot write legibly (even reasonably neatly if I must), but that I don't. I have often blamed it on using computers all the time, but that's not really true - I do write too.

I have a note book that I use daily at work; each page is the same: there is a fairly neat title, then as we go beyond the first few words, I can barely decypher what it says. Actually, each word is like that too - I can only read the first letter.

I am beginning to understand the reason that I write like this: time. Once I get into the meeting/notes/whatever, my writing doesn't keep up with my thoughts, two characters into each word, and I'm needing to write the next one, so the rest of the word becomes an irrecoverable squiggle.

In fact what I end up doing is inventing a new shorthand as I write ("let's define this squiggle to mean 'upercalifragilisticexpialidocious'"). Of course, the lack of a systematic method means that by the time I come to read it, I've no idea what new shorthand notations I invented.

So, the proposed solution is is actually learn a shorthand method, one that someone else has worked out already, one that works, and one that is written down somewhere.

Types of shorthand.

So, this leaves me searching the internet for shorthand tutorials (it's a subject that's surprisingly scarce on the internet actually). The first question is "which shorthand?". There are many types, each with various merits. The two famous ones are called "Gregg" and "Pitman". Pitman requires you do do different weights/thicknesses of line, which would not be practical I think. Gregg seems more practical, very fast but very complicated - it's aim seems to be for super-fast writing, rather than ease of use.

In the end I've decided to go for a little known shorthand called "Alpha Shorthand" that has a couple of references on the internet, including a youtube video. Here's the teaching sheet: Alpha Shorthand.

Let's see how I get on...