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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
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<div class="text" style="color: #FFFFFF"> A Web Site dedicated to the
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<td width="178"> <span><a href="index.html">Home</a><br />
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<h3><strong>CHAPTER EIGHT </strong></h3>
</div>
<p align="center"><strong>MORE ABOUT VOWEL EXPRESSION</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> The
sound elements should always be written in the order in which
they are heard.<br />
—Edwin
Guest</p>
<p style="text-align: justify"> The
slightest thought on the subject is enough to show that when outlines
of consonants are alone used, they can, strictly speaking, have
no sound at all. The place of the vowels may be guessed, so as
to impart a living sound to a dead form.<br />
—Edward
Pocknell</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> As some
of my readers have not studied other systems, it may be well to
describe the method by which vowels are expressed in disjoined-vowel
systems, when they are expressed at all.<br />
In Pitman’s Shorthand, twelve
vowels are expressed by a dot and a dash in three positions alongside
the consonant. The dot is made heavy for certain vowels and the
dash is likewise made heavy for certain vowels. In theory, at least,
these fine distinctions are supposed to be observed in writing and
to be observable in reading.<br />
<strong>A Scientific Analysis. —</strong>
The best scientific demonstration we have read of the absurdity
and impracticability of this method of vowel representation was
that made by Mr. Edward Anderson in the <em>Journalist</em> (London)
for December 15, 1888, in answer to an attack on the Taylor system,
which had appeared in the <em>Phonetic Journal</em>. It gives us
pleasure to quote Mr. Anderson’s analysis of the manner in
which vowels are expressed, when they <em>are</em> expressed, in
Pitman’s Shorthand.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify"> Consider
for a moment what vowel-position really means in practice. The normal
length of a consonant may be taken as ⅛ of an inch. Therefore
in a system of three-placed vowels the dot or tick must be written
accurately to the 42/1000 part of an inch. If a system admits half-length
consonants (as Phonography does) then the vowel to the half-lengths
must be written accurately to the 21/1000 part of an inch. Moreover
these extremely fine distinctions have to be adhered to when the
hand is writing at the rate of say 150 words a minute equal to 2½
words in every second of time. Is the thing practicable? Taylor
says it is not. You almost agree with him, for you go on to say
that Byrom’s five positions are clearly too many; and these
are equivalent to a distinction of the 25/1000 part of an inch,
which gives a trifle greater scope than the Phonographic half-lengths.
Besides, since the time of Taylor, the refinements of light dots
and heavy dots, light dashes and heavy dashes have been invented,
which render accuracy still more impracticable. In addition to all
this we have the very weighty evidence of experts in Phonography,
who tell us that it is not necessary or practicable to insert more
than one vowel in every 30 or 40 words.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify"> <strong>What
“Position” Fails to Do. —</strong> As it is utterly
impracticable to express many vowels by disjoined dots and dashes—made
light and heavy and placed in certain positions alongside the consonants—after
the completion of the consonantal skeleton of the word, resort is
had to position to indicate the vowels. As we have shown in another
chapter, this simply means that the <em>sixteen</em> sounds (twelve
vowels and four diphthongs) are supposed to be indicated by three
positions, an average of more than five for each position. And the
position does not tell <em>where</em> the vowel occurs in the word!<br />
That accomplished shorthand reporter,
Mr. George R. Bishop, in discussing the weakness of Pitman’s
Phonography in vowel expression, put the case very well. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> In
the <em>vowel</em> department, there has been what seemed to be
a grim despair as to finding any solution of the undoubtedly serious
difficulty—the case seeming hopeless, and an equally grim
determination to disguise the existence of the defect. The mode
of <em>indicating</em> vowels by “position” of the
consonant signs was a device of the older shorthand systems long
antedating Mr. Pitman. As Mr. Pitman adopted some consonant signs
and devices from older systems, so he seems also to have adopted
from them this ancient <em>vowel indication</em> idea.<br />
There was this marked difference,
however—a difference which told heavily against him on the
score of definiteness: that while the older systems indicated
at most, six vowels by three positions, or two for each position,
the Pitman undertook to indicate, with the same number of “positions”
from fifteen to twenty sounds, including the diphthongs; and while
some of the old systems indicated their smaller number of vowels
merely as <em>initial</em> ones—those <em>preceding</em>
the strokes so written in “position”—the Pitman
undertook to indicate its larger number of <em>sounds</em> not
only as preceding, <em>but also as following</em>, the consonants
written; thus doubling the already increased ambiguity. . . .
It is needless to comment on the heavy task imposed on the shorthand
writer who is obliged to guess <em>which one</em> of twelve different
things indicated by the same position is the one actually intended
in a particular instance.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> Yet many
advocates of this clumsy, indefinite method of “indicating”
five or more vowels by one “position” (which cannot
be observed with precision in rapid writing) and in a manner which
does not tell whether the vowel precedes or follows the consonant
or, indeed, where it occurs in the word, will hold up their hands
in absolute horror at the thought of three closely-related vowel
sounds being expressed in practical writing by one sign! Could insincerity
or prejudice— call it what you will — go farther than
this?<br />
I am now going to give a number of
quotations from eminent authors, reporters, and teachers on the
importance of the vowels. The first quotation is from Mr. George
R. Bishop. a distinguished reporter. and the author of “Exact
Phonography.” Mr. Bishop has been President of the New York
State Stenographers’ Association and President of the Law
Stenographers’ Association of the City of New York. His views
on joined vowels are set forth in considerable detail in the preface
to “Exact Phonography,” which was a very ingenious effort
to incorporate joined vowels by strokes in a geometric system.</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> Turning
to the standard textbooks of Phonography and looking for a practical
illustration of this indefiniteness, one found that its author
repeatedly recognized it as among the possibilities that a writer
of this system would employ the same outline in the same position,
with equal cogency, to represent any one of eight or nine different
words: often necessitating, one would conclude, nearly as profound
a study of contexts and the general drift and meaning of the matter
reported as an archaeologist would need to employ in the deciphering
of a partly defaced ancient tablet.<br />
As one result of dissatisfaction
at this indefiniteness, the last decade has witnessed the appearance
of a considerable number of new works on shorthand; a distinct
effort to remedy this one more serious defect being discernible
as a leading motive in most of them. In England this striving
after something better has been particularly noteworthy.<br />
In the <em>Reporter’s Assistant</em>
(Second Edition) we find “opened, pound, pent, append, compend,
pained, paint, pinned, compound, penned, punned, oppugned,”
as different readings for the same sign in the same position.
Obviously it might be difficult for even the most expert and best-informed
writer to determine from the context which of these twelve words,
eleven of which could be employed as verbs, was just the one to
be transcribed, in a particular connection. Leaving the expert
writer, and coming to one not highly skilled—one unable
to appreciate what best fitted the context—what would his
situation be, assuming that he sought aid from the Reporter’s
Assistant? And what should we expect the mental state of a class
of boys of thirteen or fourteen to be, if, on being first assembled
as a class in phonography, it were described to them how much
of indefiniteness there was inherent in the vowel part of the
system—the “Assistant” being referred to as
indicating one of the possible results of it? What matter of surprise
is it that so little progress has been made in the teaching of
shorthand in schools, in view of this inexact state of the art?</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> Isaac
Dement’s Emphatic Statement. — In the preface to his
textbook on Pitmanic Shorthand (Second Edition) Mr. Isaac Dement
said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> I have
seen the time when I would have given the price of the transcript
for a single vowel. . . . Some of the best reporters of my acquaintance
employ vowels very freely— if they cannot put them in at
the time, the first lull finds them busy ornamenting their notes
with them—and the poorest reporters (?) I know say they
have no need of vowels, in fact, never learned them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> In an
article on “Significant Tendencies in Shorthand,” Mr.
W. E. McDermut, a well-known court reporter in Chicago, who has
written the Munson system f or over thirty years, said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> It
has been my experience, and it is that of many old reporters with
whom I have talked, that the fatal weakness of the Pitmanic systems
lies in the general inability to determine how a word begins,
whether with a consonant or a vowel, and if a vowel, what one.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> <strong>A
Famous London Reporter.</strong> — The next quotation is worthy
of a careful reading. It is from the pen of Mr. Thomas Hill, Past
President of the Shorthand Society, London, head of the firm of
Thomas Hill & Co., Law Reporters, London. Mr. Hill has been
a writer and reporter, using the Pitman system for over thirty-five
years.</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> As
to the mode in which the vowels should be represented, probably
most experts would agree that joinable vowel signs, which could
be written in the order of their occurrence, and woven, so to
speak, into the texture of the word, would be preferable to the
detached marks sprinkled in among the consonants, out of their
natural sequence, after the consonantal skeleton has been placed
upon the page. In any system the provision of a complete set of
easily joinable vowels would do as much to compensate for shortcomings
which might exist in other parts of the stenographic scheme.<br />
Professional phonographers have,
no doubt, often wished, when dealing with unusual words or difficult
subject matter, that their system provided them with joined vowels,
or, at least, with vowels of such shape that they could be joined
initially.<br />
A vowel occurring initially is generally
the most distinctive vowel in the word, and for joining purposes
it is probably the most important. In some cases it is the only
vowel which it is necessary to insert for the purpose of making
a distinction between two words containing the same consonants.
It may often lead to the recognition of a distorted outline, and
so give a clue to the whole word. The insertion of an initial
vowel would have prevented an equilateral triangle from being
rendered as a collateral triangle in a sermon published in a once
well-known serial. Apart from the characters for <em>w</em> and
<em>y</em>, there is only one vowel in Phonography, namely, the
long <em>i</em>, which will lend itself to junction with an outline,
and the possibility of joining even that one is restricted to
three or four consonants.<br />
An incidental benefit arising from
the use of joined vowels is that it enables the first syllable
or two of a long word to be used in many cases with safety to
represent the whole word, and puts into the hands of an experienced
writer a means of extemporizing contractions without the risk
of illegibility. The clipping of words after this manner has been
in use probably from the earliest days of shorthand, but a system
in which connective vowels are used gives the best opportunities
for carrying out this method of abbreviation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> <strong>A
Congressional Reporter. —</strong> The late David Wolfe Brown,
author of “The Factors of Shorthand Speed,” said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> When
a word, because unfamiliar, is indistinctly understood, the vowels
are generally more clearly heard than the consonants, and though
the consonant outline may be incorrect, a clearly expressed vowel
may be so wonderfully suggestive as to settle beyond doubt the
word intended.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> <strong>Herbert
Spencer’s Views. —</strong> The great English scientist
and philosopher, Herbert Spencer, in his criticism of Pitman’s
Shorthand dwelt strongly upon the unscientific nature of disjoined
vowels. The analytical nature of his remarks on the subject show
that this great authority had given the subject a great deal of
thought. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> The
vowels are not sufficiently distinguishable. The sounds, e, a,
ah, are indicated by dots, and au, o, oo, by small dashes; and
it is hardly to be expected that in rapid writing these marks
can be made with such accuracy as to insure their identification.
Moreover, the distinction between the individual vowels, dependent
as it is upon the placing of the dot or dash at the beginning,
middle, or end of a consonant, is such as cannot be observed with
certainty. And, further, the greater heaviness of touch by which
the long vowels are known from the short ones can never be given
with anything like precision without an amount of care inconsistent
with expedition. …<br />
The legibility of the system is
certainly- injured by the apparent transposition of letters, resulting
from the peculiar arrangement of the vowels. A dot at the beginning
of a consonant is, as likely as not, to signify a vowel after
it, or dot at the end to imply a vowel before. …<br />
Phonography looks simple in consequence
of these movements having no representations upon paper, whilst
in reality they require an equal amount of time with those that
leave visible signs behind them. Nay, more; to lift the point
of a pencil from the paper and carry it over the surface to make
a dot at some other place, involves a more complicated muscular
action than its transference to the same point along the surface
(that is, without leaving the paper), and probably more time is
expended in the motion.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> The initial
difficulty which the student encounters in separating vowels and
consonants is well expressed by Julius Rasmussen, LL. B.:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> If
the student takes up a Pitmanic system, he is taught to make outlines
of the consonant characters and omit all -silent letters and vowels,
which may give him the same outlines for such words as <em>eastern</em>,
<em>Saturn</em>, <em>Austrian</em>, <em>stern</em>, and <em>strain</em>.
Since the student has for ten or fifteen years looked upon language
as composed of consonant and vowel sounds, it will necessarily
take him several months to learn to look at the language in this
new way. And what is most important, while the writing is difficult
the reading is still more difficult, and the consequence is that
the transcript is very faulty.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> <strong>Masterly
Statement of Case. —</strong> One of the most powerful presentations
of the arguments in favor of joined vowels was made by Mr. Hugh
L. Callendar, B.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, author
of “Cursive Shorthand”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> In
the disjoined-vowel systems the consonant outline of each word
is written first, and the vowels are dotted in afterwards in their
proper places. This is called “vocalizing” the outline.
The writer has to go over each word twice, in a highly artificial
and unnatural order, if he wants to put in the vowels, that is
to say, if he wishes his writing to be legible. …<br />
It is often maintained that a detached
vowel mark counts in loss of time only about as much as an extra
lifting of the pen. This is very far from true. In addition to
the lifting of the pen there is the time occupied in making the
stroke or dot and locating it carefully in its proper position.
This is not unnaturally found to be longer than the time required
for the mere making of the same number of dots and ticks irrespective
of position. Besides this, detached vowels usually involve hesitation:
after finishing the consonant outline the writer has to make up
his mind what vowels to insert and where, or whether he can leave
the outline unvocalized: with unskilled writers this is a fruitful
source of loss of time: with skilled writers it is often almost
unnoticeable. But the most serious hesitation generally occurs,
and this even with the most skilful writers, <em>after</em> inserting
the vowels and before proceeding to the next words. This is most
strongly marked after inserting two or more vowels in one outline.
It is probably due to the illogical order in which the vowels
are written. The mind momentarily loses its place in the sentence,
and has to go back and pick up the lost thread, so as to find
what comes next. The result is that the insertion of detached
vowel marks always involves such a disproportionate expenditure
of time, that they must be omitted in writing at any reasonable
speed.<br />
The chief advantage of detached
vowels is that they present an <em>appearance</em> of brevity,
and look neat, especially in print. They are so inconspicuous
that the inexperienced eye does not realize the difficulty of
inserting them accurately and takes no account of the aerial movements
of the pen which their insertion involves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> <strong>Significant
Confession. —</strong> Perhaps the most convincing indictment
of disjoined vowels is to be found in a quotation given in “Progressive
Studies in Phonography,” published by Isaac Pitman & Sons.
Here it is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> Just
where the greatest speed is necessary, to write a consonant and
then put in the vowels in their proper places, is where the most
hesitation is likely to be. First, time is lost in getting the
true sounds of the words; second, comes the quickly-to-be-disposed-of
thought how to write the consonants the best way and which vowels
to put in and how many (all this is less than a second). By this
time the outline has made such spasmodic jerks that full-lengths
are half-lengths and half-lengths are twice as long as they ought
to be, or an intended hook has been made into a circle or a circle
into a hook.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> <strong>The
Dual Analysis of Words. —</strong> Another view of the matter
is presented by Mr. D. Kimball:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> In
Phonography all the vowels are of necessity written separately
from the consonants, i. e., must be written beside the consonant
so as to show what sound they represent by the position they are
in. It is so difficult to put them in their exact position in
writing, even beside full length consonants, where the writer
must bring his pen down one-twelfth of an inch, and be sure a
dot does not lengthen into a dash, that were this the only defect
it would be an almost effectual bar to rapid writing. But consonants
are made half-length—about one-twelfth of an inch long,
each of which has also its three positions. We venture the assertion
that the person never lived who had that accurate command of his
hand that would enable him to write vocalized Phonography fifty
words a minute and get his dots and dashes the right shape, and
just where they belong, beside the full and half-length consonants.
This is never attempted in practical work; but it is a necessary
part of the theory, a hideous nightmare to the learner and user.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> Mr. Kimball
then describes the “dual analysis of words necessary in Phonography”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> The
difficulty of writing sufficiently exact to be legible mentioned
above, is a minor one compared with that of the double analysis
which the writer of Phonography is compelled to go through with
each word when fully expressed. He is obliged first to go through
each word mentally, analyze it, pick out the consonants and write
them; then, beginning the word again, re-analyze it, pick out
the vowels and dot or dash them in beside the full or half-length
consonant, being sure he remembers their positions and lands them
exactly where they belong, or he will rue it when he comes to
read.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> After
giving some illustrations of this troublesome process, he concludes
with this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> As
a necessary accompaniment of this tedious, unnatural and burdensome
double analysis, comes the slow, uncertain and difficult process
of putting in the disconnected dots and dashes beside the consonants-a
process so irksome that most phonographic writers prefer to halt,
stumble, and guess in reading unvocalized outlines rather than
go to the extra time and trouble of putting in the vowels in so
awkward and unnatural a way—unnatural because the order
of the letters is not that of the words in which they occur—one
does not think that way, speak that way, or write that way, except
when he is trying to use this exceptional, crude, and ill-devised
scheme. It is too laborious, unnatural, slow, and unsatisfactory
for practical use even by the devotees of the system. Yet it is
the best they have to offer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> <strong>Advantages
of Joined Vowels Summarized. —</strong> One of the best presentations
of the case for joined vowels is to be found in a paper on “The
Power of Connective-Vowels in Shorthand,” which was read by
Mr. Peter Vogel, law reporter, before the Pennsylvania Shorthand
Reporter’s Association in 1904. Mr. Vogel is a writer of Lindsley’s
Takigrafy—a connective-vowel system on a Pitmanic basis. Here
are some paragraphs from this paper:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> Vowels
not dependent on position can be independently written, and so
furnish a broader basis for “wordsigns,” and relieve
the overloaded consonants, and in that proportion at least, enhance
legibility.<br />
It is often much quicker to write
the vowel than to move to position and have, besides, something
to read instead of ending with a guess. The resulting outline
on paper may seem to be the longer, when in reality it is shorter.
So both speed and legibility are gained.<br />
Besides, the necessary lifting of
the pen and replacing it on paper at “position” adds
immensely to this invisible “waste of material,” which
so deceivingly looks like brevity and speed.<br />
When the eighteen vowels and diphthongs
are distributed to three positions, as in Phonography, say six
to a place, the riddle in reading is, “Which of the six
is meant?” And if there happens to be a series of like ambiguities
following or preceding, the solution may become dangerous. Some
years ago, for example, a Democratic and a Republican reporter
“took” a political speech in Phonography for their
respective St. Louis papers, and an important passage appeared
in print diametrically opposite in sense, resulting in a considerable
quarrel. When the matter was sifted, each reporter had the same
consonant outline and the difference lay in the political spectacles
through which the absent vowel was seen. This could not have happened
with a connective vowel.<br />
While the peculiar outline often
determined where the vowel to be guessed at should go, it sometimes
becomes enough of a problem to determine its imaginary habitat
to delay and even puzzle the reader.<br />
For the sake of having the outline-form
kept to determine the place where the guess comes in, it becomes
necessary to commit many special forms, where the connective-vowel
writer can proceed with delightful abandon.<br />
A connective vowel often relieves
what would otherwise be a bad angle, and here again the longer
form is the speedier, in addition to being definite.<br />
The number of possible outlines
can be greatly multiplied by the use or absence of a vowel, and
so relieve consonant outlines from congestion and make them more
definite.<br />
The definiteness which a written
vowel gives to an abbreviation often enables one to shorten it
beyond what is otherwise possible, thus contributing to speed
and retaining legibility.<br />
The absence of a vowel in a particular
place is often in a connective-vowel system an indication of what
it is, from the fact that had it been another vowel it would have
been so easily written at that particular place that it would
not have been omitted.<br />
Proper nouns, such as names of persons
and places, especially when unfamiliar, must be vocalized to be
legible, and where there is a succession of them, as often happens,
Phonographic “position” is inadequate, vocalization
too slow and longhand out of the question.<br />
A similar thing is true in meeting
the expert witness. No reporter, especially no young reporter,
can be acquainted with all the new terms of advancing science
and art, and many of these terms when unvocalized are either hopelessly
confused or irretrievably lost.<br />
Position-writing to express omitted
vowels depends on the accented vowel, is governed by it, when
as a matter of fact that is often far from being the important
vowel in the word or the most helpful either in writing or reading
the word.<br />
As said before, there is quite an
extended and growing list of words wholly vowel, where Phonography
must always utterly fail.<br />
Position writing is a hindrance
to freedom in phrasing and often requires a word to be read against
the position it occupies. Here the connective vowel is peculiarly
at home.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> I have
now said enough, and quoted enough in support of joined vowels.
The next point is: How shall the vowels be represented in a joined-vowel
system? As the vowels are vastly more frequent than consonants,
it follows logically that if vowels are to be joined, they should
be expressed by the most facile of all characters—circles
and hooks. As Mr. Kimball put it in “How Shall We Write?”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> Consonants
are to a word what the bones are to the body—the large,
strong framework. Vowels are to words what the flesh is to the
body: they give to them form, flexibility, volume. It is desirable
that two classes of sound should be represented by letters readily
distinguishable; to the consonants should be assigned large letters,
and it is best that the vowels should be represented by small
letters.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> Even
that militant champion of Pitman’s Shorthand, Thomas Allen
Reed, in reviewing the Duployé system, makes this admission:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> The
use of the circle for certain vowels enables many short words,
in which some vowel representation is absolutely necessary, to
be easily and briefly written without lifting the pen.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> When
it is remembered that the great bulk of the words the stenographer
will have to write are “short words” the significance
of this admission will be apparent.<br />
<strong>Circle “Speeds the Writer.”
—</strong> In Pitman publications in England, no writer is
more frequently quoted at the present time than Mr. James Hynes,
the manager of the London office of Isaac Pitman & Sons. One
of the Pitman publications recently contained a series of “Lecturettes
on Pitman’s Shorthand,” by Mr. Hynes. These lecturettes
were evidently written for the purpose of minimizing the numerous
difficulties of Pitman’s Shorthand. The airy way in which
Mr. Hynes disposed of some of the problems that confront both learner
and teacher must fill the mind of anyone who is familiar with the
subject with something like admiration. But the difficulties remain!<br />
Mr. Hynes did not confine himself
to mere exposition of rules and exceptions to rules. Here and there
he diverges from the main topic to defend the system of his employers.
Speaking of the use of the circle for <em>s</em>, for instance,
he says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> The
system is built for speed. … Think of the extraordinary
facility of form provided by the use of the small circle for <em>s</em>,
and how, as a matter of fact, the inclusion of the circles actually
speeds the writer, in the majority of cases, by reason of the
easy, graceful sweep with which the outline can be made as a result
of the introduction of the circle into the form. It is an interesting
and undoubted fact that the writing of the circle <em>s</em> medially,
though it adds another sign to the outline, in a great majority
of cases very materially increases the speed at which the outline
can be written. You only have to try such forms as <em>fsn</em>,
<em>msl</em>, <em>rsm</em>, <em>rslv</em>, <em>psi</em>, <em>tsk</em>,
<em>ksp</em>, with and without the circle, and I am sure you will
agree with the statement.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> Evidently
Mr. Hynes has been profiting from our anaiysis of the value of the
circle! The interesting fact is this: That our statements about
the circle—made again and again, in almost the identical language
now used by Mr. Hynes—have been vociferously denied and ridiculed
by the advocates of Pitman’s Shorthand! It is refreshing to
have our theories so ably championed by an employé of the
Pitman firm! If Mr. Hynes is correct in his statement about the
circle increasing the speed of the writing, the question is: Which
system has made the best use of the circle? Manifestly s does not
occur by any means as often as the vowels <em>e</em> and <em>a</em>,
hence the circle which; according to Mr. Hynes, “speeds the
writer,” occurs much more frequently in Gregg Shorthand than
in Pitman’s Shorthand.<br />
Mr. Oliver McEwan, who was for many
years regarded as a high authority on Isaac Pitman Shorthand, said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> Now
all shorthand writers know that an outline composed of two straight
strokes connected by a circle is usually more easy, or at least
quite as easy, to write as a combination of the same two strokes
<em>without the circle</em>. The circle occupies no time in writing,
its formation being equal to the making of the angle at the point
of union of the two strokes. The Pitman outline for <em>task</em>
(<em>tsk</em>) is quite as easy to write as the outline for <em>take</em>
(<em>tk</em>).</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify"> But there
is considerable difference in the manner in which circles and hooks
are used to represent vowels in various joined-vowel systems. When
we discuss the application of these various basic principles in
the construction of the alphabet of “Light-Line Phonography,”
we hope to demonstrate very conclusively that the plan followed
by the French systems and by the adaptations of these systems to
English, and which was copied by several indigenous systems, is
not the most practical one for the English language.</p>
<p align="center">- <a href="basicp11.html">Chapter Nine</a> -</p></td>
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<a href="anprface.html">Preface</a><br />
<a href="anaboutg.html">About Gregg Shorthand</a><br />
<a href="aneditor.html">Editor's Note</a><br />
<a href="antwtbgr.html">A Talk with the Beginner</a><br />
<a href="analphbt.html"> The Alphabet</a><br />
Chapter I<br />
<a href="anunit01.html">Unit 1</a><br />
<a href="anunit02.html">Unit 2</a><br />
<a href="anunit03.html">Unit 3</a><br />
Chapter II<br />
<a href="anunit04.html">Unit 4</a><br />
<a href="anunit05.html">Unit 5</a><br />
<a href="anunit06.html">Unit 6</a><br />
Chapter III<br />
<a href="anunit07.html">Unit 7</a><br />
<a href="anunit08.html">Unit 8</a><br />
<a href="anunit09.html">Unit 9</a><br />
Chapter IV<br />
<a href="anunit10.html">Unit 10</a><br />
<a href="anunit11.html">Unit 11</a><br />
<a href="anunit12.html">Unit 12</a><br />
Chapter V<br />
<a href="anunit13.html">Unit 13</a><br />
<a href="anunit14.html">Unit 14</a><br />
<a href="anunit15.html">Unit 15</a><br />
Chapter VI<br />
<a href="anunit16.html">Unit 16</a><br />
<a href="anunit17.html">Unit 17</a><br />
<a href="anunit18.html">Unit 18</a><br />
Chapter VII<br /> <a href="anunit19.html">Unit 19</a><br /> <a href="anunit20.html">Unit 20</a><br /> <a href="anunit21.html">Unit 21</a><br /> Chapter VIII<br />
<a href="anunit22.html">Unit 22</a><br />
<a href="anunit23.html">Unit 23</a><br />
<a href="anunit24.html">Unit 24</a><br />
Chapter IX<br />
<a href="anunit25.html">Unit 25</a><br />
<a href="anunit26.html">Unit 26</a><br />
<a href="anunit27.html">Unit 27</a><br />
Chapter X<br />
<a href="anunit28.html">Unit 28</a><br />
<a href="anunit29.html">Unit 29</a><br />
<a href="anunit30.html">Unit 30</a><br />
Chapter XI<br />
<a href="anunit31.html">Unit 31</a><br />
<a href="anunit32.html">Unit 32</a><br />
<a href="anunit33.html">Unit 33</a><br />
Chapter XII<br />
<a href="anunit34.html">Unit 34</a><br />
<a href="anunit35.html">Unit 35</a><br />
<a href="anunit36.html">Unit 36 </a>
<p><a href="anindex.html">Index</a></p>
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