Contractions are outlines where some of the consonants or syllables are omitted.

• Their purpose is to achieve greater brevity for common words, or to avoid overlong or awkward outlines.

• They are never vocalised, except for the initially attached diphthong "I".

• Most of them are written on the line, regardless of the first vowel of the contraction or any added prefix.

• Many of them stand for two or three variations on the word, and as these are always different parts of speech, ambiguity is avoided. Lists below show some of these sets, for ease of practising. See also Past Tenses below for disambiguation where necessary.

• Derivatives can be formed by adding a prefix, suffix, hook, circle, loop, halving, etc, to the contraction. These additions are generally (but not always) vocalised but the contraction part of the outline remains unvocalised. Some of the "-ively" variations are not entirely consistent in the extent of their vocalisation, but the exact dictionary versions are given here; in any case you will not need to vocalise the outlines during normal writing.

• All but 5 of the contractions use the dot for "-ing" so that they continue to be recognisable as contractions (see Suffixes General/Ing page for explanation)

There are many outlines that omit a lightly-sounded consonant such as "pos(t)man" "assum(p)tion" but as they behave according to the normal rules – fully vocalised, written in position and standing for only one word – they do not count as contractions.

• Short forms consist of either one consonant stroke, or one vowel sign.

• Contractions have two or more strokes.

• The two names are merely a convenient way to split the groups. In the later instruction books "New Course" and onwards, this distinction is not made, all are called short forms, and their lists are split according to frequency, with the majority of single-stroke short forms showing up in List 1. This enables the learner to master the most frequent outlines first.

Ways in which contractions are formed:

1. Using the first two or three consonants of the word e.g. “resp” for “respect”. If the speaker actually says the shortened word, such as “rep, max, Feb, prob, Uni” you should write exactly what they say, using a vocalised outline (so it does not look like the contraction) and written in position as per normal rules; you then  have their words verbatim and can make the correct decision when transcribing. If someone says “rep” they may mean “repeat” or “representative” or "repertory", and “probs" could mean "probabilities" or "problems".

2. Omitting a medial consonant or syllable(s) Quite often this is where two consonants come together, and omitting one of them does not affect the legibility of the outline e.g. "produ(c)tion".

3. Based on a short form, or two short forms together e.g. "anything".

4. Two strokes intersected, generally the first two consonants e.g. "nevertheless".

5. Omitting the first syllable, only 4 do this.

It is well worth learning the derivatives and the related words at the same time, as this will prevent hesitation, when you might be wondering if the word dictated calls for a contraction or a full outline. When in doubt, you should always write the fullest outline you can, and look it up later.

Past tenses

Some contractions and short forms have the same form for present and past tenses of a verb and it is usually clear which is meant from context. If in doubt, write with full strokes, or, if the outline has already been written, put a wavy line underneath as a reminder it has a past tense ending. Note that an intersected dash is only used to signify an intervening dash vowel in an initially hooked stroke e.g. collect, purchase, furnish (see Theory 7 Hook R-L).

The ambiguity happens mostly when the contraction is a verb that is being used as an adjective, or if the outline could be read a some other unvocalised outline, or more rarely if the word is being given as a lone example:

discharge water outlet, discharged water outlet
the exchange goods, the exchanged goods

a suspect person, a suspected person, I saw the suspect*

* the noun is a normal full outline

project costs, projected costs, practice word list, practised word list

the people are subject to harsh laws,
the people are subjected to harsh laws

Short forms:

a number list, a numbered list (x2)

an improved plan (x2), an improvement plan

To distinguish:

make informed decisions, make enough decisions

Absence of context:

I spelled "informed" wrongly.
The past tense of "inform" is "informed".

He said that "opinion" is a short form outline.

Particularly with "public" and "published" the latter should always be written in full, as context would mostly give no clue as to which was meant:

the public report, the published report

Learning the outlines The best method is to insert one or two new outlines into a short easy sentence that fills one line of the notepad, then copy that sentence all the way down the page, saying it to yourself as you do so. The easy outlines "carry" the unfamiliar outline, and this allows you to write at a comfortable and even rate, thus avoiding any "stop/start" tendency. After a few lines, you know the wording and the shorthand, and so you can continue writing to the bottom of the page without the need to glance at the line above. This only works well for sentences; if drilling single outlines, your brain, fingers and eyes will most likely give up in disgust after only a few lines of unnatural word groupings! If you can't manage the whole page, move on and come back to that page another time.

You could take sentences from your instruction book and replace one or two words with the outlines you wish to learn, which ensures that all the shorthand is correct. If you are using a printed facility drill book, it may be helpful to write out the shorthand sentences given into your own blank notepad, but with only one sentence per page. This is not high-speed practice, but it is a good opportunity to write your most perfect evenly-flowing outlines, to counteract any sloppy habits that might have crept in.

Abbreviating The term “abbreviation” or “abbreviating principles” met with in shorthand books is used to mean any method whereby the outline is made shorter or more compact i.e. using hooks, circles, loops, halving, doubling, producing an outline that still contains all the sounds of the word (in most cases). The term is not applied to contractions/short forms, which mostly leave out some of the sounds or whole syllables. In normal speaking, the term “abbreviation” refers to any method that makes either spoken or written words shorter (such as SE for South East, PC for personal computer), but within shorthand instruction books the word is used in a more restricted sense.

Several placenames (United Kingdom, United States and others) can be found at the end of the Contractions Optional page.

LISTS The lists below target specific points that may need extra practice. They are given in the same order as they occur in the Contractions Main list. You might find it helpful to print them off for your resource file, spacing them out and filling in the shorthand.

Initialisms, truncations and abbreviations - they may try, but they cannot catch us up for speed and convenience. However, the numerals are excellent "shorthand" already.

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"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things." (Philippians 4:8)

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