Learning shorthand

In the past few weeks I’ve been learning Teeline shorthand from the book “Teeline Shorthand Made Simple” by Harry Butler.  It has been a useful and enjoyable endeavour.  Teeline is spelling based system, not a phonetics based system like Pitman, which I started learning and gave up on a few years ago. Therefore it substitutes symbols for letters and its like speedwriting with enhancements.

So why am I learning shorthand in an age of voice and video recorders on my smartphone?  First its an interesting skill to learn, although I’m very unlikely to use it in my professional working life.  Secondly, as someone who is vaguely interested in foreign languages (A level French and GCSE Spanish) it gives me a deeper understanding of how written languages work. Thirdly, I find the best way to take in new information is to write it down and later write up about it.  Yes, voice and video recorders are better at note taking but written note taking forces you to actively listen to what is being said. 

Butler’s book is well written and each new item has an exercise afterwards to let you practice and test what you just learnt.  And like I mentioned earlier, I bought it second hand on Ebay.