How to distinguish letters?

[supernib44]

I am just beginning to learn Gregg.  I am having a hard time telling letters apart.  For example t, ch, and sh look almost the same.  Also p and b look just like "ten" and "dem", especially when I am reading what I have written.  Any suggestions?  How long to study the basic first page letter forms? 

[rich]

Yes, trying to read a beginner's writing (including your own) is the wrong way to learn shorthand. Obtain an actual textbook, printed on paper, and work through it, one lesson after another.

[rich]

By the way, there is a book you should download called Direct Practice Units for Beginning Gregg Shorthand. It starts off with short simple texts written in shorthand and it gradually gets more complex. Working your way through it will help you learn to read Gregg. If you google the title you will find the link to the file on the other Gregg forum.

[supernib44]

I do have two of my Grandmother's textbooks from the 1920's, the anniversary edition and the speed studies book. I will look at that direct practice units for sure. Particularly when writing it is hard to distinguish between some of the letters and some abbreviated word forms. I am in the process of writing out a massive amount of flashcards, just to study on the go. I realize that it is best to practice letters in words instead of their isolated forms. Any suggestions for a beginner- anything you found out after months of study that you wish you learned from day one?

[rich]

Dec 15, 2014 17:48:27 GMT -5 supernib44 said:

I do have two of my Grandmother's textbooks from the 1920's, the anniversary edition and the speed studies book. I will look at that direct practice units for sure. Particularly when writing it is hard to distinguish between some of the letters and some abbreviated word forms. I am in the process of writing out a massive amount of flashcards, just to study on the go. I realize that it is best to practice letters in words instead of their isolated forms. Any suggestions for a beginner- anything you found out after months of study that you wish you learned from day one?

(1) Learning Gregg takes a while. When it was taught in high schools and colleges it was typically a two year course. First year for learning all the rules and regulations and brief forms, second year for doing speed-building exercises.

(2) Visualize each word's outline in your mind's eye before starting to write it. It's like sketching the profile of somebody's face -- you can't do it if you don't know what their face looks like.

(3) You can make up your own drills for things you're having trouble with. Write "bang bank sing sink" over and over until you want to barf. Write "bend depend band expand" over and over until you get dizzy.

P and B are written with downward motion and are supposed to have that special, slightly hooked shape (which you also see in K and G). They claim that shape is a portion of an ellipse but it's actually a segment of a parabola. The "ten/den" symbol has a different shape and is likely to be written upwards. Look up the word "attend" in the anniversary dictionary (which I think you can download from the Angelfishy site).

It's probably better to learn short words and absorb the alphabet that way, rather than looking at the alphabet chart. 

[rich]

SuperNib, I've been thinking about your situation some more and I think you should cover up the alphabet chart with Post-It notes so that you can't see it for a while. Let's move on to Unit 1.

Paragraph 1: Gregg is written by sound rather than spelling. For example "through" is written with 3 symbols: a symbol for the TH sound, a symbol for R and a symbol for the vowel. Got it? Any questions?

Paragraph 2: Related consonants have similar symbols. Do you know what the terms consonant, vowel and diphthong mean? If not, look them up. You're going to need to understand those terms.

So, K and G are written with similar symbols. G is the voiced counterpart of K. In other words your vocal cords vibrate when you pronounce G but they don't vibrate when you pronounce K. Cold, gold, clue, glue. The voiced consonant gets the longer symbol.

Same deal with T and D. Those are written upwards and from left to right.

You'll notice that there are two symbols for the TH sound. Wait a minute, English has a voiced TH (as in "that" and "bathe") and a voiceless TH (as in "think" and "with.") So, do we have one symbol for the voiced TH and one for the voiceless TH?

No! In Gregg both of those TH sounds can be written with either one of the TH symbols. We have two symbols only for the purpose of making it easier to write. When you are connecting the TH symbol to another symbol in a word, you pick the one that makes a more legible word outline, or an easier connection to the next symbol.

Now look at the symbols for G and L. Notice that these are not symmetrical curves. They are more sharply hooked on one end than the other. Practice writing those with the extra hookiness at the correct ends. K and R have the same shape but it's harder to see it on them because they are smaller.

A very important concept on this page is the use of abbreviations. The L symbol, by itself, can represent either the word "will" or the word "well." Using the letters on this page you can crudely write the phrase "I can not go" with four abbreviations.

If you peek ahead at paragraph 4, you can see that these abbreviations are often fused together. So when you see TL or EK written in Gregg, you will need to understand that they represent "it will" and "he can."

Getting back to the TH symbols, one of them is the abbreviation for the word "the" and the other one can stand for "there" or "their."

Now you will notice that a large circle stands for the pronoun "I" and a tiny circle stands for "he." The way we abbreviate "he" is logical; that small circle represents the "ee" vowel in words like "free" and "tree."

However, using the large circle to represent "I" is quirky and irregular, because that circle does not have the "long I" sound most of the time. So why do we do it this way? Because "I" is a very frequent word and we want to use a symbol that we can write very quickly to represent it.

As you can see, there is a lot of information on each page of the textbook. Not just the stuff that is actually written there, but all the background information that you have to figure out. Take it slow but keep moving forward! Carry on!

[supernib44]

Dec 16, 2014 1:32:29 GMT -5 rich said:

Dec 15, 2014 17:48:27 GMT -5 supernib44 said:

It's probably better to learn short words and absorb the alphabet that way, rather than looking at the alphabet chart. 

I already learned the alphabet by making flashcards.  I printed out from Anglefishey the list of the 300 something short forms in Gregg.  Would be terrible to make up my own abbreviations as I go along?  I mean, while starting out I might do this.  What about writing out whole words, with each letter included?  What I am trying to get at is- is the textbook doctrine, meaning I won't be able to use Gregg until I complete all the lessons?  Since I don't intend anyone else reading my shorthand, can't I just make up my own abbreviation's?

PS.  What's the deal with the "r" loop?  When is it used and why not use the regular "r".

[rich]

About making up your own abbreviations: You can do whatever you want if you don't plan to read anyone else's shorthand or show yours to anybody else. What happened to the whole sharing shorthand with your grandmother thing?

[supernib44]

Making up my own abbreviations was just a passing thought. I have decided to learn the orthodox way, since I realized what a limitation making up my own abbreviations would be. Today I talked to an acquaintance that used to teach the diamond jubilee version. She is very helpful. After my conversation with her I came up with what I'll call my...

"Gregg Shorthand Battle Plan."

-first I am going to go through the textbook, doing at least one unit a week, focusing on comprehension and reading (but still doing the writing exercises, but not drilling too much)

-I'm not going to look ahead of where I am in the book

-after I finish the book the first time I will start at the beginning and do all the chapters again while focusing on writing (drill,drill,drill )

-then I will test myself that I know the abbreviations etc...

-followed by doing the Speed Studies book I have

-I am not going to use shorthand during lectures, church, etc... until after I have started working on the Speed Studies book


Does this seem like a good plan? Would it be better to use shorthand outside of practice sessions before I really know what I'm doing? Am I missing anything?

Thanks for the advice Rich.

[rich]

Your battle plan sounds practical. Onward!

[Deb]

Rich, thank you for all your help and answering his questions!
supernib44, your plan sounds great!

Here's a little tip. supernib44, you mentioned how "t" and "sh' and 'ch' look alike. Even though "chief" and "tiff" are written the same, you will know "chief" over "tiff" when you read it in a sentence. You won't say "he is the tiff officer of the company." Even though they are written very close, the meaning in the sentence will guide you. But you might write "my daughter had a tiff with her boyfriend" in your journal, but you would not read it later "my daughter had a chief with her boyfriend." Similar things will happen with other characters. As you learn, you will note small differences.
Good luck supernib44, and keep us posted.

[Deb]

I found this in The Principles of Gregg Shorthand, pg 129

The distinction between sh, ch, and j can be maintained very easily—the tick for sh
being a mere drop of the pen, such as is used in the first part of the bookkeeper’s check mark.
The beauty of it is that even when the distinction is not observed there is no trouble in reading
the forms correctly. If French becomes Frensh, or even frenj, it does not matter in the least.
Hundreds of other illustrations are already familiar to you.

So basically, it's going to be hard to transcribe the wrong word.

Also it said,

My observation is that in such words
the student of our system follows the ordinary spelling instinctively and makes the characters ch
length.

And as you start learning, shun and sh is close but:

As sh expresses shun, that very common termination is
disposed of by a facile downward tick that joins easily after all characters.

Again if a careless writer occasionally writes s without curving it, the s may resemble sh.
In that event, s-k-e-m (scheme) will be read as sh-k-e-m, disguise as dish-guise—
and there can be no misreading.

[Deb]

Practice individual characters every now and then. This will improve your shorthand writing and keep it consistent. You can do the same with similar outlines.
Here is an example of constants from an issue of the Gregg Writer, 1913.



From Writing Shorthand greggshorthand.proboards.com/thread/1009/writing-shorthand?page=2

[Deb]

A little instruction from the Gregg Speed Studies Anniversary Edition book that might help with some letters:

[Deb]

Pre-Anniversary but you can see the different lengths of the strokes