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On this page:
My Other websites
Portraits of Sir Isaac
Pitman
Shorthand Books
Writing Equipment
Shorthand Websites
Shorthand
Transcription
Shorthand Articles
Dictation
Typing/Dictation
Software
Shorthand Interest
Please note that information here is gained only from the websites,
and you should check out authors' credentials before buying goods or
services.
MY OTHER WEBSITES
https://long-live-pitmans-shorthand-lessons.org.uk This is for
the complete beginner, consisting of 60 graded Lessons pages, 58
Exercises pages, and downloads of Facility Drill PDFs.
https://www.long-live-pitmans-shorthand-reading.org.uk Extensive
reading material in the form of blog articles in shorthand with text
key, snippets in scribbled shorthand, downloads, facility drills and
zips of MP3 dictations, covering 2012 to 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BerylPratt
Shorthand being written, demos of Noodler's Flex Pen and folding the
miniature booklets.
https://www.yellow-teddy.org.uk
Yellow Teddy keeps an extensive diary of his
activities and travels, as a change from looking up outlines in the
dictionary for me.
PORTRAITS OF SIR ISAAC PITMAN
National Portrait
Gallery, London
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw05032/Sir-Isaac-Pitman
Oil painting
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw253105/Sir-Isaac-Pitman
Monochrome photogravure
Mary Evans Picture
Library, London
https://www.maryevans.com
Picture No. 10220330, this is the photograph that appears in the
Wikipedia article on Isaac Pitman
Bath In Time
https://bathintime.co.uk/image-library/image-overview/poster/12149/posterid/12149.html
Bath Central Library's photo of Pitman's publishing works in
Twerton, UK.
SHORTHAND BOOKS
The New Era version of the
Pitman Shorthand Instructor is available as free PDF
download from:
https://archive.org/details/pitmansshorthand00pitm
The version below contains the
Key to exercises as well, but is very low quality resolution,
therefore use the above high resolution one for the main body, and
the one below for the key, pages 345 to 448 of the PDF:
https://ia601608.us.archive.org/15/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.459783/2015.459783.Pitman-Shorthand.pdf
The large New Era dictionary
is available as a free download from:
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.449114
The above dictionary also lists
the differences between New Era and its predecessor Centenary.
For pre-1922 shorthand:
Centenary dictionary:
https://archive.org/details/englishshorthand00pitmiala
Ebay UK always has a plentiful supply of Pitman's Shorthand
books, far more than the Ebays for other countries. Do check that
the version says New Era on the cover, spine or title page, as
"Centenary" and "20th Century" are the older versions before the
theory revisions of 1922.
Ebooks
I cannot advise on Ebooks or PDF downloads, whether free or paid
for. Some may be legitimate, but I feel that some may have been done
from scans of books that are not out of copyright and without
permission. You might wish to check first whether the book you are
interested in is already available on the free Internet Archive.
Internet
Archive
The American Libraries Internet
Archive has very many digitized old shorthand books that you can
read online and most can also be downloaded as PDFs, enabling you to
avoid paying antique prices and spend it instead on your New Era
books or shorthand pens. Pre-New Era shorthand will confuse the
beginner, but the advice, discussion and shorthand learning tips are
always interesting to peruse, and are equally relevant today. You
can clipboard the interesting sections and build up your own
"advice" file, especially beneficial for those learning on their
own.
Please be aware that many of
the Internet Archive PDFs are now being offered by third parties as
reprints with a recent "publishing date" and the unwary buyer may
end up with an outdated historical version of shorthand, whether
Pitman's or otherwise, when they thought they were buying a modern
shorthand book. Some of the adverts have small print advising you of
this, as a disclaimer against scanning faults, but some have nothing
to indicate the actual age of the text being offered.
The Internet Archive site also
provides OCR-generated text versions of their books, which often
contain mistakes in recognition because of the lack of crispness of
the original letterpress pages, as well as strings of strange
characters as it has failed to cope with the shorthand outlines. I
believe most New Era books are still in copyright, therefore they do
not appear in that Archive. It is not guaranteed that any of the
digitized books are actually out of copyright, and so you are not
necessarily free to do as you like with them. The archive is for
scholarly and research purposes, see their terms of use.
Dates of Pitman's Shorthand
versions:
20th Century = 1900
Centenary = 1913
New Era = 1922
Pitman 2000/Shorterhand = 1970
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WRITING EQUIPMENT
Pens &
Ink
Using a fountain pen with a generous ink flow
for your normal longhand writing will accustom you to writing fast
with a light touch, a good habit to have if you should later on
acquire a flexible-nibbed pen for shorthand writing. However, if you
try to write Pitman's Shorthand with a normal steel-nibbed pen, or a
cheap one with miserly ink flow, this will have the opposite effect
of causing you to dig the paper, in a fruitless effort to form the
thick strokes.
If buying from Ebay – undescribed
yellow-looking nibs are not always gold, they may be unyielding
gold-plated steel, or even plain steel with yellow reflections from
the surroundings. I prefer to see "14K" "18K" etc on the nib neck.
www.gouletpens.com based in Virginia, USA - inks, pens and
sundries, from where you can obtain the excellent and inexpensive
Noodler's Flex Pens for your shorthand. Further information and
demos on their Ink Nouveau website
www.inknouveau.com
www.purepens.co.uk Pure Pens
supply Noodler's pens and inks. They are part of Niche Pens Limited
www.nichepens.co.uk
and are based in Newport, Wales, UK.
http://noodlersink.com Their pens are dedicated to being simple
to adjust and disassemble, so that you can fine-tune to your
requirements or reuse vintage and other nibs in them, and kept at
low price.
Both Goulet and Noodlers have many informative
videos on YouTube.
www.fountainpennetwork.com "Categorized
forum with discussion topics such as repairs, history, news,
penmanship and calligraphy."
Ideal place for detailed info and advice from pen
enthusiasts. Site also has calendar of Pen Club meetings and
classified adverts of pens for sale.
www.thewritingdesk.co.uk
Inks, pens and sundries. Based in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK.
SHORTHAND WEBSITES
The
Joy of Pitman Shorthand
https://pitmanshorthand.homestead.com/index.html
Gives an overview of the
system, with many items of general shorthand interest. Writer based
in Toronto, Canada.
Reddit Shorthand
Forum
https://www.reddit.com/r/shorthand/ Discussion on all forms of
shorthand, present and past
Shorthand Shorthand
Shorthand
https://shorthandshorthandshorthand.com
Devoted to pen shorthand, mainly
Gregg but everyone welcome. History, tips and good advice from a
shorthand enthusiast, and an especially interesting page comparing
shorthand writer versus tape recorder.
Gregg Shorthand
https://greggshorthand.github.io/index.html
(ex gregg angelfishy net) The
definitive site for Gregg Shorthand, including full teaching
materials/texts, lessons and extensive descriptions of the system's
revisions over the years.
https://gregg-shorthand.com
Interactive blog for enthusiasts and learners of any form of the
Gregg system.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2221533661/
"Gregg Shorthand Readers, Writers and Fans"
German
Shorthand
https://www.stenografenverein.de Promotes and teaches German
Unified Shorthand - DEK (Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift), and
keyboard, computer and writing skills. Based in Langen (Nr
Frankfurt) Germany.
They have an archive collection of
historic shorthand books, literature and objects relating to
shorthand, to preserve this knowledge for future generations, and
are keen to increase this:
https://www.stenografenverein.de/stenografie/stenografische-sammlung.
They also able to decipher any
German stenograms/items of shorthand for you:
https://www.stenografenverein.de/stenografie/stenogramme-entschluesseln
Website written in German
SHORTHAND TRANSCRIPTION
Shorthand Tracey
https://shorthandtracey.co.uk
&
https://shorthandtranscription.co.uk
Paid Pitman's New Era Shorthand transcription service for those
intriguing undeciphered texts or old journals you may have lying
around, and also pre-New Era historical shorthand transcription.
Tracey Jennings-Harding, based in UK.
Shorthand
Translation Services
Translations from Gregg by Ms Letha Sanders in Colorado USA.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/letha-sanders-22591444
See entry above on German
Shorthand for translation of items in DEK, Gabelsberger or other
German systems.
SHORTHAND ARTICLES
Hold The Front Page
https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk Everything of interest to the
would-be journalist, the search box will bring up many articles on
shorthand.
Shorthand Sue Teaches Teeline
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwKMKRJZG4M
Six informative YouTube videos on Teeline basics, produced for
Journalism course at Liverpool John Moores University.
Let's Love Teeline Together
Beginners lessons, exam prep, speed and dictations:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8C-I4BFOz6neY2KrQ_paQA/videos
Lesson 1 is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STTP6olkZ7k
Pitman Training
http://www.pitmanlondon.co.uk/documents/building-to-high-speed.pdf
The text is taken from Chapter 30 of the book "Teeline Shorthand" in
the Made Simple series by Harry Butler, and gives much good advice
and encouragement for writers of any system. (Harry Butler wrote
high speed Pitman's as a journalist and teacher of long experience.)
Pitman Training no longer teaches Pitman's
Shorthand but instead offers Teeline which is an entirely different
system - please check what type of shorthand being offered before
paying or committing yourself to any course or materials. Pitman
is just the name of the company/franchise now, which may cause
confusion for those who are not aware of this.
Pitman Training may be found to occasionally
offer Pitman 2000 beginners/refresher or New Era refresher
self-paced courses, depending on location, and it would be prudent
to find out beforehand whether there is a teacher for these, or just
materials and dictations.
Computerised shorthand
Stanislav Sarman has created programmes to convert text into
Pitman 2000 or Gregg.
http://steno.tu-clausthal.de/Pitman.php
The Pitman version is not 100% accurate, and
therefore should not be used to actually learn the system, as the
learner will not know which are the incorrect outlines. Outlines
that it cannot produce are displayed as a shorthand question mark.
Text to Pitman2000 conversion A
Pitman 2000 writer has created a program to carry out this
conversion, and has given permission for a sample to be included
here. The text of "Desiderata" is public domain since 1976 and can
be found online, but the shorthand sample remains the copyright of
the conversion program author.
Click the thumbnail to get the full
678KB JPG
http://www.intersteno.it/uploads/enews63.pdf A short article in
their June 2014 newsletter on "Shorthand against dementia"
DICTATION
See
https://www.long-live-pitmans-shorthand-reading.org.uk/blog-downloads.htm
for MP3 dictations of all my reading website articles.
Online Stopwatch
https://www.online-stopwatch.com
Stopwatch, countdown, metronome, timers.
Incorporated Phonographic
Society
https://the-ips.org.uk
"The world's oldest society of shorthand writers" This
society has been going since 1898 (and since 1872 under an earlier
name) and they offer independent speed examinations for both
typewriting and shorthand and a quarterly IPS Journal.
BBC Learn English
https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish
General interest articles as well as explanations on points of
language.
Pitman Training
http://www.pitmanlondon.co.uk/shorthandspeed Page contains many
audio tracks downloads at speeds 40 to 130 wpm. There is also a PDF
giving excellent and extensive advice on speed training techniques,
well worth reading by learners of any system. English male and
female voices. (Note this site is not https://)
www.biblegateway.com/resources/audio The Bible in a variety of
versions and languages. There is a choice of readers: Dramatized
(several voices), George W Sarris, or Max McLean.
www.audio-bible.com The
King James Bible in audio for listening online, narrator Stephen
Johnston. The website is in large font to aid the visually impaired.
I have timed the first chapter of Genesis at 170wpm, which is slow
for listening but fast for shorthand writing. At this speed, it may
be more useful to prepare the passage and write lightly in pencil
over the top of your ink outlines. You can halve the speed by
writing every alternate sentence
If using the Bible, then
Proverbs is a good chapter to start with, as the sentences are
mostly quite short, with more common words, and do not contain
unusual vocabulary or names.
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TYPING / DICTATION SOFTWARE
Express Scribe
https://www.nch.com.au/scribe/index.html Transcription software,
using footpedal or keyboard commands. It has a variable speed
slider, with pitch maintained, from 25% to 225%, although below 50%
hearing the words becomes a strain.
Audacity
https://www.audacityteam.org/download
A simple and easy free sound editing program for recording
dictations, and edit or change tempo to alter the speed, then output
to a variety of file formats such as MP3.
SHORTHAND INTEREST
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Sir_Isaac_Pitman_and_Sons Gives a
list of dates of various shorthand systems from 16th century and
Pitman historical dates up to present.
Trowbridge
Museum
https://trowbridgemuseum.co.uk Information on Sir Isaac Pitman's
home town. A similar PDF is available from Trowbridge Town Council
Pay attention to ... what?
Throughout this website I encourage
thinking of shorthand while you are out and about, looking at
adverts, road and shop signs etc, and taking shorthand study
material with you on your Ipod or similar device. The short videos
on
www.stoptextsstopwrecks.org show very forcefully the dangers of
texting while walking or driving.
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