Here's another example of phrasing pushed to its limits. Notice that the last sentence, containing 20 words, has been written in FOUR "phrases". Is that really a good idea?
Look at some of those sprawling, contorted outlines. Do you think you could write them clearly and smoothly? I don't think I could....
Our LeadingSuspect5855 has been working hard on his system he calls "FLOW" which is based on the frequency of sounds in English. When I look at it, it immediately makes sense to me -- a very good sign.
He's already produced a 20-page manual/booklet for it, which will soon be available on Stenophile.com when a few final details are smoothed out. I think it will be worth the wait.
He has also produced a 6,000-word reverse dictionary, and has nearly finished a shorthand generator which will produce the correct shorthand outline for any word entered phonetically. (I've tried it out and was amazed.)
He's had to take a bit of break because of eye problems -- which I'm sure were not helped by spending all this time working on the fine details before it's all revealed to the public. But I'm looking forward to this....
This is the worst suggestion, IMO: In order to distinguish between YET ANOTHER long list of ambiguous outlines, you're told to violate the RULES you've struggled so hard to learn -- and you're supposed to write some of them in special "incorrect" ways, so you can tell which they were supposed to be. Really?? Are you going to remember which is which?
You recall that, after teaching the complicated system of vowel indication, they tell you to just leave them all out, in order to acquire any speed? Well, it turns out that there's ANOTHER long list where you MUST remember to put them in! Will you remember which ones they are, when you're in the habit of dropping them?
Experienced Pitman writers have told me that they often "don't bother" to write in position -- but this list shows a long list of words that MUST be written in position to be legible. (Panel 2 shows what they look like.)
In the Introduction to his "New Standard Shorthand" (a system with joined vowels), Charles E. McKEE wrote the following devastating summary:
Far too many "fast writing" systems give out the reckless advice to just leave out all the vowels, and "The context will tell you what the word is"! Wrong.
Sure, leaving out a crucial and important part of a word will give you the ILLUSION of speed -- but when it comes time to read it back, you could find yourself in a very bad place.
When PITMAN, held by so many to be "the best", after making learners struggle mightily to learn the ornate system of light and heavy dots and dashes that have to go in very specific places to be legible at all, THEN advises its writers that, if they want to achieve any kind of useful speed at all, they should just OMIT ALL THE VOWELS (!!), there could be serious trouble ahead for anyone writing anything important. Let me show you:
If you have PTHTC, was it "pathetic" or "apathetic"? If you have BSLT, was it "obsolete" or "basalt" or "absolute"? Was it "relevant" or "irrelevant"? "material" or "immaterial"? INITIAL vowels are crucial because, in English, a vowel in front makes it negative.
But it's as bad without medial vowels. Was it "prosecute" or "persecute"? How about "apparition", "portion", "operation", or "oppression" -- all of which can be written the same way, in a disemvowelled system?
Try "abundant" or "abandoned". Or "prediction", "predication", or "production". The list goes on and ON!
Imagine trying to produce a transcript of crucial court testimony, given by a witness sworn to tell the truth, when you had ambiguities like that! I was shocked they even allowed Pitman writers to report in court. (And MY correctly spelled transcript appeared on the screen in a nanosecond. Try THAT with Pitman!)
I keep meeting people who try to tell me "Pitman is the best". No, it's not! In "Classic Pitman" the words "artisans" and "righteousness" are both written the same way, because the consonant skeleton is the same, when you drop the vowels, like you usually do. I sure wouldn't want to risk trying to write anything important with a system like that!
Okay, now I'm going to play another verse of my "Vowels are Important" song!
As I've mentioned, it really shook me, some time ago, when I realized that GREGG Shorthand, which I had used and relied on for many years, wrote "Live this life" and "Leave this life" in exactly the same way, because it conflates the short I and the short E. If you had somehow realized the ambiguity as you wrote that, and put in the long-vowel diacritic for clarity, you might have been okay.
But when those special signs stopped even being TAUGHT, there's a good chance you might not even have learned them. The result is that statement could be read in two DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE WAYS. A time to worry.
Then I checked PITMAN's means of vowel indication, and I realized that the two sentences would be written the same way there as well!
Even if you had taken the time to GO BACK and dot in the vowel sign, the difference in Classic Pitman between long E and short I is that long E is a heavy dot, while short I is a light one. But if that's the only vowel you've taken the time to insert in the whole page, are you really going to be able to tell whether the dot you wrote is light or heavy?
Depending on your writing tool, it could be anybody's guess.
When a system has a complicated set of rules that can be applied in a VARIETY of different orders, this can result in the same set of consonants resulting in a startling variety of very different shapes, depending on WHICH rules are applied and WHEN.