h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Perhaps this Entry could've gone into a bit more detail about what Teeline is, as it differs from Pitmans in a number of respects.

Teeline streamlines each letter of the alphabet, reducing them to their basic components. The form gets its name from the notation for the letter "T" which is a - above the line on the page. Other examples include ^ or ` for the letter "A", ( for the letter L, or / for the letter "R." Most vowels are omitted, except where they occur at the beginning of the word or if it's essential to identify similar words. Eg "name" becomes "nm", "Teeline" becomes "tln" with a " underneath it to denote a proper name, while "open" would be written "opn"; to distinguish, say, rat from rite (sans vowels, both would "rt"), the ` symbol for A or I (a ` in the opposite direction) would be added to the - (for T). As you might expect, accurate translation back into longhand form depends a lot on context.

There also forms used to signify common prefixes or suffixes like -ion, -ink, or -ength, or whole words.

There's another form, called Greggs, which I know absolutely nothing about, but someone out there must be fluent in it.

Forgive me, but I know very little about teeling. When learning about shorthand, I just looked at the difference in writing speeds and went for pitman.
I shall see about including your info in the artical. Cheers.

-OPD

Hey, Oliver! Listen, you have nothing to apologise for!

You can only write about stuff you know or have read up on, right? I don't know anything about Pitmans so there's no way I could write an Entry on it. But as you will no doubt have noticed, h2g2 has an incredibly diverse bunch of people, and while I don't know Pitmans, you do. I know about Teeline, and, I'm betting, there's a researcher out there who knows Greggs. Thus we can all work to help each other out and improve the Guide through a multitude of different voices... and so on, in a similarly Trekkie vein.

Might also be worth mentioning the Graffiti recognition system used on the Palm PDAs.

Each letter and number can be written using a single pen-stroke. Other characters may require a 'shift' stroke to select that set of characters.

While not actually shorthand (you still have to enter every character), it relieves the computer of the hard task of recognising genuine handwriting.

Having said that, software is available that does some predictive text stuff, so you don't always have to write out whole words.

Teeline is an essential "tool of the trade", according to the majority of a sample of approx 70 working journalists (representative mainly of the print media) who responded to a recent survey I carried out here in New Zealand.

After some years of putting up with students resenting having to learn Teeline shorthand and telling me that they would use tape recorders once they graduated anyway, I was compelled to investigate whether or not there really was a need for shorthand, with all the hi-tech gear around these days.

By far, the majority of respondents resported that shorthand was essential in the work that they were doing and that tbeir use of tape recorders was, in fact, very limited in view of numerous problems associated with this technology.

I'd be interested in hearing whether journos elsewhere still find shorthand particularly useful.

As a NZ journo, I know I do!

BTW there is a survey on NZ journos I've always wanted to carry out - the proximity of pubs and/or bars to any given newsroom. I have a theory that the average distance would be under 25 metres.

I started with Teeline and became fluent enough to write notes etc with ease but I always found it too cumbersome, putting ease of learning before speed.
If you want to write shorthand really fast you need Pitman New Era or Gregg Anniversary. I chose the latter. It requires far more attention to penmanship than Teeline. If a line is straight, long and horizontal it must be written as such. A small variation can change the meaning making your outlines illegible. All it takes is practice and I soon got the hang of Gregg. It's also easier to read back than Teeline or Pitman's (which I did try: but hated having to write in pencil and could not get my head round position-writing): Greggs includes far more vowels. It's just as fast as Pitman's (if you use the Anniversary version) but will take far more practice than Teeline. I heard a speed of 110 words a minute is considered pretty good in Teeline; Pitman and Gregg writers can exceed 200 wpm with the records being 280-300wpm. I can do 70 already ~ that was my first ever speed test. I learned via the manual I got online at http://gregg.angelfishy.net it runs to about 160 sides of A4 in pdf.

ps there are 2 versions of Pitmans: 2000 is slower ~ and 6 versions of Gregg of which Anniversary is widely accepted to be the best. It was the last system Mr Gregg worked on before he died. Afterwards the system was progressively dumbed down through subsequent new editions of the textbooks. Other sites and forums will give more details.

Hope this answers any queries on the 3 systems.