Posted on by Cathy

Some could – some couldn’t

I was one of the latter…..it just didn’t make sense.

I met someone the other day who could – and still does

The amalgamation of Probus clubs I spoke about last year has happened so I popped into their offshoot ’book club’ group the other day…..it means I can get to know some of the ’new to me’ members of the other club in a more casual environment while chatting about something we all enjoy – books we’ve read, books to be read as well as books currently being read.

They are a little bit more formal in their ways in that they actually keep ‘minutes’ of a sort at the book club noting – what I just said…..books read etc and who spoke about what.

And guess what the ’scribe’ was doing…..I watched her hand and thought ’that doesn’t look like longhand’ – it wasn’t. Turns out she was one of the ones who could…..and (aged 85) still does at every opportunity she told me. ’Never lose your skills because you never know when you’ll need them’!

As I said, I was one who couldn’t……were you one who could?

Here’s a really interesting article to read – https://www.britannica.com/topic/shorthand

32 Replies to “Some could – some couldn’t”

  1. I interviewed for a job long long ago. I was asked if I took shorthand and said yes. A bald lie. I stopped at the library on the way home and found a book called HiSpeed Longhand, or something like that. I practiced every night until I started that job. It’s the “shorthand” I still use, when required.

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  2. Not only did I take shorthand in high school and college, getting As in all those classes, I also taught the skill for the first two years I was at Fresno High. I loved it.

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      1. I haven’t used shorthand since I left teaching. I’m thinking my brain has slowed too much to keep up with taking notes on a conversation.

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    1. Maybe it was the hair tied in bun and pencil plus notebook that was the attraction – in many places they also had to wait on (and serve tea to) their bosses and clients

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  4. I would have been a honor roll student when I was in high school if not for shorthand. I just could not grasp it, and struggled to make passing grades in the class, even getting a D on my report card – the only D in 12 years of school. I could type faster than anyoe else, so it was not hand/eye coordination, just something else I could not master.

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    1. Hello Ana – a little like you the mystery of shorthand didn’t unfold for me either. I’ve put all those low marks behind me now……It took a while but I’ve now realised there are some things I was destined not to master…..crochet is one 😊

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  5. Hari OM
    Indeed, I learned Pitman shorthand and ‘speed writing’ (mnlee tht ws drppng vwls) and used it the first three or four years of my early commercial career. Then along came computers and I was off in another direction! YAM xx

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    1. lol Yam – you’re one of those. The clever ones….do you solve cryptic crosswords as well? That’s another skill I don’t have!

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  6. I was taught it for a few months but my hands didn’t care for the squizzles so I gave up – but I was quite good at book keeping until I was outsmarted by a wizard i.e. a husband who actually turned out to not know what he was doing…but that’s another story!

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  7. Oh! Yes! For the first five years of my working life I was a legal secretary…and also a couple of brief times thereafter. So shorthand was part of my “9 to 5” routine, five days a week. I still have my Pitman’s Shorthand book, but I have lost my ability to do shorthand these days. The last time I took any shorthand was back in the early 90s, in Townsville when I worked briefly for a law firm in that city.

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    1. I thought of you as I was crafting this post Lee, fairly confident you would be one who could. Even though you still have your instruction book it’s possible online manuals (with the ability to make the ‘strokes’ larger) might make it fun for you to do a refresher course to get your hand in again.

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  8. F wasn’t allowed to learn short hand at school and got ‘streamed’ into languages classes (yeah really useful stuff like Latin). She resorted to inventing her own for notetaking at University and still uses it for recording business telephone conversations etc.

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    1. Tigger I’m like F and developed my own system which was useful when manning a hospital switchboard as well as other situations. The Golfer has been known to ask ‘what all that scribble is about’

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  9. I did a years commercial course after school to learn shorthand and typing. Lucky I never had to earn a living from it. Shorthand was mumbo jumbo and my typing was two fingered as it is now.
    My Mother taught shorthand and typing. She was a whizz. Not her daughter though.

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    1. That’s exactly what my mother said when she saw the results of my business classes. Stick to what you know- unfortunately I never got to know or understand the squiggly bits and thankfully was never asked if I did know

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  10. I learnt Pitman shorthand 60 years ago and still use it for notes at meetings and talks. Thanks for the link to Britannica. I had no idea there were so many other versions of ‘quick’ writing.

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    1. I thought that was interesting as well. For years I didn’t realise there was more than one version- it was Pitmans or none

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  11. Just recently I thought about shorthand and I remembered the Pitman version but I couldn’t think of the name of the other version and I cared enough to not Google it.

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    1. For years I didn’t realise there were more versions than Pitmans. It was the only one I’d had experience with. Would shorthand skills been an asset in your working life Andrew?

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  12. No I never learnt it, nor typing. Had to learn the latter when computers came along. I still prefer long hand, something about pen and paper. However, I am proud of my youngest son who played interactive computer games as a teenager. He sounds incredible when he types and straight out of school got a Good gap year job based purely on these speeds. Think rapid gun fire.

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    1. I never had the desire to work in the typing pool room…..wouldn’t have been accepted for a start but the thought of sitting there, (having been chosen because of my typing speed) , just typing ten to the dozen all day long didn’t turn me on at all. I’m in awe of people like your son whose fingers move faster than I can think

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  13. I took typing 1 and 2 and after I graduated wished I had taken shorthand. that makes me someone who could not.. I went through this when looking for a TOPS meeting to attend back in 2017. TOPS is take off pounds sensibly. there were two near to be, I went to one and then the other and there was no comparison. I jumped into the 2nd one. the odd thing is I instantly did not like the first group and loved the 2nd. for 4 years I went there and some of our people left and want to the one I did not like others left that and came to us. I think it is best to have two groups because we have the chance to pick which we like. hope this makes sense

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    1. thanks for your comment today about your drought and the ideas you gave me for watering plants

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  14. Nope lnever leart, and ifI had, I would have forgoitten today. I taught myself how tho read and write cyrillic handwriting back when I saw Dr. Zhivago. I wrote my diary using this alphabet for over a year – and can’t read now what I wrote back then 😉 Time for a re-learn.

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  15. I remember being absolutely horrified that they changed the syllabus on us when I was in Year 8 and so Year 9 instead of as many electives as we had, we were all required to do another year of typing.
    What would I EVER need to learn typing for?
    Well, to earn my bread and butter and to set me that one step ahead when programming and using computers, so they must have known something!
    Shorthand, however – possibly the reason that Miss Brake didn’t make it to 100 was student like myself being dragged through Pittman. But then again, I often can’t even read my own writing – it was just another form of scribble.

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  16. I think shorthand was dying by the time I entered the workforce in 1989 and I studied science so it wasn’t a skill I needed. I had a friend who learnt shorthand, probably in about 87. She must have been one of the last.
    There was a Pitman Shorthand book on my parent’s bookcase all the years I was growing up, it’s probably still there

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