A tutorial when you look at the missing technology of shorthand
As a journalist, we start most interviews by supporting my pen and asking, “Have you ever seen one among these?” No one ever has.
It is perhaps maybe not a regular pen, needless to say. It’s a Sky wifi smartpen, a bit of gee-whiz technology from the ongoing business called Livescribe. Fundamentally, the smartpen replaces all your standard reporter’s tools. The way I always have to start with, it’s an old-fashioned pen for old-fashioned paper, so I can still scribble my notes. The smartpen normally a top-quality electronic recorder, producing an sound file associated with meeting even as we go along. Finally, a small camera near the end associated with pen simultaneously takes images of my records when I compose.
All that given info is then taken together by way of a microprocessor housed into the barrel of this pen. And as the smartpen is actually some type of computer, it’s in a position to sync the picture up of my handwritten records using the audio file. This means i could touch the end regarding the pen any place in my notebook, and also the pen will immediately replay the audio of whatever ended up being being stated once I took that note. And as it’s WiFi enabled, the whole interview—audio file, records, and all—is immediately uploaded to my Evernote account. It’s a small as promised.
There’s an added function i love to mention. It’s possible, We tell individuals, to have character that is optical pc computer software to choose the pen. In the event that you compose like an ordinary individual, the OCR will automatically transform your handwritten notes as a text file you could then copy and paste into the term processor. For most reporters, this is basically the feature that is best, obviating the painful task of transcribing long interviews. But it does not work though i’m recording this interview with the latest model Sky wifi smartpen, I’m taking notes using a 19th Century technology called Gregg shorthand for me, I explain, because even.
In lots of respects, Gregg is also more innovative compared to the smartpen. And, although no electronic devices or gizmos were included, it absolutely was a tremendously effective and influential technology for almost a century. Now, it’s end up being the key to my workflow on the web age.
Gregg is means of compressing psychology research paper example language. You’re the device that does the decoding and encoding. As well as your mind may do it in realtime at really, really high rates. To comprehend why, you must know only a little regarding how it really works.
Gregg is simply a easier and much more efficient composing system than longhand English. This begins because of the letters by themselves. The Roman alphabet, which we used to compose English, is more complicated than is strictly essential to differentiate one page from another. To print a lower-case “b”, as an example, calls for an extended, downward swing with a clockwise cycle during the base. Then, you need to choose your pen up to move to another page, an extraneous action which occupies nearly just as much time while the writing it self. Cursive (whenever had been the time that is last heard that term?) might seem only a little faster, however it really calls for extra shots, quick ligatures in the beginning additionally the end of each and every page. That’s great deal of wasted movement, and that’s why cursive is clearly no more than 10 % quicker than printing.
On the other hand, Gregg’s “letters” are much easier shapes. Listed here is the very first paragraph with this article printed in shorthand:
Consonants are either shallow curves or right lines; vowels are either loops or hooks that are small. The Gregg “b”, for instance, is a uncomplicated downward swing of this pen—a long, forward-leaning curve that faces off to the right, like an available parenthesis in italics. In the event that you gauge the complexity of composing when you look at the wide range of shots, the Gregg “b” calls for just one single swing set alongside the 4 or 5 that comprise the Roman “b.” Gregg letters additionally require no ligatures; each page blends seamlessly to the other people. When you look at the combination “b-r”, for example, the long, downward bend of a “b” joins the brief, horizontal bend of a “r” to create a kind of right-handed fishhook.
Right right Here, you can view the Gregg letter “b,” then “r,” and a mix of the 2, which will represent “bring” ( more on that abbreviation in a full moment):
In Gregg, the simplification associated with the kinds of letters reaches its apogee in an ongoing process called “blending”. The patient strokes of several usually combined page pairs are written with an individual blended swing. The quick, right, horizontal dash of an “n” together with long, diagonal, upward swing of the “d” join to be a lengthy, upward bend that represents “nd”. This not merely decreases the amount of shots, it eliminates the pause that is momentary to make an angle between your “n” plus the “d”. This convenience of design—the absence of superfluous strokes—accounts for around 10 % regarding the rate of Gregg.
Right right Here’s “n,” hen”d the “nd” combination:
An additional benefit of Gregg is the fact that it’s phonetic. Your message “bay”, for instance, is created “b-a”—the easy downward bend associated with the “b”, completed with all the big, counter-clockwise loop of an “a”, so the word that is whole three letters in longhand, appears more or less like an individual sloping form of the Roman “b”. Gregg eschews the parade of quiet letters, just like the “y” in “bay” that produce English so hard to understand as a language that is second.
Recent Comments