RE "Gregg Notes"
I've been preparing to somewhat informally teach a course in shorthand but find that my method of shorthand has considerably evolved from that which I learned some fifteen years ago. Briefly, I spent ten years (1993-2003) taking notes for an on-campus lecture notetaking and publishing service. During that time I developed many principles and techniques that I am only just now fully appreciating are not in any of the "Gregg Shorthand" versions that are out there that I am aware of. Basically, the system I've developed is very much developed around the practical issues of taking fairly readable notes for a wide variety of college-level subjects being taught be a wide variety of instructors. I am only now really beginning to appreciate just how much Gregg's versions were designed around business-secretarial and court-reporting purposes -With a huge emphasis toward always choosing trade-offs in the direction of greater speed (less accuracy and readable as trade-off examples) and ...well other principles that are implemented in the post-1888 versions of his system that are as near as I can tell completely absent (or reversed or contrary) in what I've developed. Far more than any of the later systems, what I now do as shorthand resembles the 1888 version only. (In one of Gregg's speeches to teachers he talks about how their is always pressure to design his system to make writing it faster and faster, but he isn't at all sure that's the right direction to have been going in...)
I have been going through and rewriting the shorthand in one of the Gregg Dictionairies to illustrate the principles I've developed and find I'm writing nearly every word differently! Although the basic 1888 "curvilinear motion" "alphabet" is almost completely retained, my method is extremely heavy on prefixes and suffixes being written slightly ajar from the rest of the (stem) word. (There is, comparatively speaking, only a tiny amount of that in regular Gregg versions, and even then other principles alter the prefixes and suffixes usually) ... and almost completely strict consistency in how the same syllables are written in different words (consistency contributes to writing speed as well as reading-speed).. and a number of other critically important principles I'll skip over for now except to point out that our practical knowledge of how language is used wasn't nearly as well understood in the 1950s as it is today.
So then, to the point of this email- There is supposed to have been developed a system for students to take lecture notes called "Gregg Notes" (GN). (As a side issue and a rough guess, it seems to have been developed around the same time as the Forkner and other systems in response to the competition for specific markets for shorthand uses?) I have read a brief description of GN, but I'm not even sure if it was ever published as an actual system. The description almost makes it sound like it was only just a vague loosening up of the rules of Gregg Shorthand? (Kind of disappointing if so.)
Can anyone provide me with some information about Gregg Notes please?
Richard Harper
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