I often say that, in English, it is very frequent a consonant will combine with a following L or R -- pl/pr, kl/kr, fl/fr and so on. Any good shorthand system needs a way to write those combinations easily and clearly.

Pitman got tangle up with writing hooks BEFORE the stroke to indicate it FOLLOWS the stroke. With straight strokes the hook goes on the right side to indicate an L, and on the left side to indicate an R. Curved strokes are different, with a small hook meaning R and a large hook meaning L.

When McEWAN uses hooks to indicate vowels E and U, he need some other strategy to indicate R and L.

300 Spartans fought in the Battle of Thermopylae, we use only words from the 300 most frequent! Written in FLOW.

In Pitman, a small circle is S and a large circle is S-S. When McEwan uses the small circle for A, and the large circle for O, he needs to show the S some other way. Sometimes he writes the full stroke S from Pitman:

Last week, I showed Oliver McEWAN's clever solution to a big problem everyone has with Pitman, by adding his own vowels to it, which were to be written right into the word. A DEFINITE step in the right direction, which I liked immediately when I saw it.

He used circles and hooks for the vowels, in much the same way as RUSSELL and FLOW. But this caused a few other problems, which I'll discuss now.

Lyrics in Flow. Listen to Bob Dylan: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSoundStage/comments/1tnobwi/bob_dylan_masters_of_war_1963/ or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7TRiyG6mfY

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/opura/id6773421455

Hey everyone! My name is Facillium and I'm an avid shorthand hobbyist. I created a new writing app Opura in hopes of streamlining shorthand practice. It's completely free and is perfect for all types of shorthand :)

In this post, I'm going to journal my raw thoughts and reflections involved in the making of this shorthand app. I hope you enjoy~

Throughout my shorthand journey, especially in the early stages, I found it quite difficult to navigate through all my shorthand resources. I'd have a tab open to the Gregg dictionary, a Word document open to all the words I've learned, and another document for future words that I'd like to learn (plus, my iPad / notebook for writing). It got quite annoying to have so many sources in so many different places. I decided to make an app to fix this and make practice as efficient as possible!

I designed Opura to be an all-in-one writing lab for every serious shorthand learner. Here are the must-have features I incorporated into the app:

• Define and Library. It is often difficult for me to find established shorthand for words in my field. If I decided to create custom shorthand for these terms, I would keep track of it in a disorganized document and need to reference them if I ever forgot. In my app, I knew I needed a page where I can type the term "caparison", automatically search if pre-existing shorthand existed, write my own shorthand for it, and then access it in a Library. Thus, I created the "Learn/Define" and "Library" tabs, where I can easily create and filter through words I've learned.
• Accessible Reference. Rather than constantly looking up words in a dictionary, I embedded the Gregg shorthand dictionary into the app itself. Whenever you define a word, the Gregg dictionary reference is automatically pulled up for you! That way, you can easily learn from the real dictionary on the spot. All credits to richyliu's (github) OCR web searcher software!
• Word-by-Word Testing. Inspired by Anki and flashcard-style learning, I wanted the app to test me on words I've learned using spaced-repetition theory. Most notecard apps do not have features supported for writing-based practice—thus, I knew I needed it in this app. I created a "Revise" tabs where you can be tested on words you've learned and 'revise' your memory!
• Practicum. This is the most important feature in my opinion—introducing Practicum. This tab automatically generates sentence practice based only on the words you've learned! This way, you can truly reinforce your knowledge and get first-hand practice without getting bogged down by new words.
• Back-Learn Any Passage. I am one to learn shorthand for my favorite songs, quotes from books, or poems. With this feature, you can simply copy-and-paste any passage/quote you want, and the app will go through and help you define each new word and add it to your Library. In the Practicum tab, you can then practice writing sentence-by-sentence for any passages you paste in.
• Many customizations. I understand everyone has completely different practice styles. Thus, in the app settings, there are a plethora of ways you can customize the interface. You can use lined paper, dotted paper, or white paper. You can toggle on-and-off the Gregg references, recommended words panel, memory hook panel, and word tags. I included three color schemes—blue, green, and classic—for all aesthetic types. You can use the app through touch (on your phone) or with Apple Pencil (on your iPad), or a combination of both! You can also download your data locally and transfer them between devices so they are never lost.
• Not just Gregg shorthand, or shorthand for that matter. While there is a built-in reference for Gregg simplified, I designed this app to be used by anyone who wants to learn any writing-based system. Someone learning Teeline shorthand can easily define a word and practice it in the same way as Gregg. Someone creating their own substitution cipher, or even Japanese or Chinese (with limitations), can use this app to practice written words and stitch them into sentences! This app should be perfect for any writing-based learner.

As this is the first version, I am very open to feedback and any additional features you'd like to see. I hope you enjoy, and happy writing!

P.S. The app's icon is Gregg simplified for "Operation" which is what the app's name is based off of—Opura!

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/opura/id6773421455

Edit: The shorthand in the second image is a sample of a new shorthand user trying out the Practicum feature, not the app's reference outlines. The app is designed so users can create, store, and practice their own outlines, with optional reference support if they want it.

I needed to get creative, or I risk loosing my account here. So if someone likes making phrases with the most frequent words including making dark humor, without ever risking to loose membership in reddit, just follow the link.

To post in nostr you need to install one of the signer tools, to make the login secure in nostr: you don't want to use the private key over the net as password (the old messy way), so those signer tools sign your messages, before sharing using the nostr protocol. Don't bother trying to generate your own pub/sec-keypair, those tools have that integrated.

What nostr signer then?

Amber is top on android (use f-droid appstore). On PC I had Keys.Band working (a extension for the browser) and right now the Plebeian Signer both excellent, stay away from nos2x (from the designer of nostr): it works too, but it is klonky. On IOS use nostash. I cannot recommend Aegis, my first choice (I wanted to use it with substr, never got it working).

This chart shows the clear advantage of McEWAN over Pitman. The Pitman outlines differ very little, even when the words are quite different from each other.

In CONTRAST, every McEWAN outline is clear and distinct -- BECAUSE THE VOWELS ARE WRITTEN. A definite step in right direction!

Here are the first 100 most commonly used words in English, with their FLOW outline added by u/LeadingSuspect5855. Notice that, in several places, there are optional outlines, depending on how fully or how abbreviated you want to write.

Notice also, that for anyone wanting to practise ANY shorthand, it's good to know. Or even if you're trying to develop your own system, a list like this is invaluable in helping you see if what you propose is clear or not. Practising a list like this can be very valuable in getting your writing to a useful level.

When I first saw this list, and the two that come after it (which will be posted later), I wrote out the whole list on the stenotype in Plover. I wanted to make sure I remembered how to write the most common words; and I also wanted to see if the outline I was accustomed to using conflicted with the recommended outlines in the free dictionary that Plover comes with.

The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), was created by Mark Davies.

The corpus contains more than one billion words of text (25+ million words each year 1990-2019) from eight genres: spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, academic texts, TV and movies subtitles, blogs, and other web pages.

This makes his listing a lot more useful than a lot of lists of frequently used words that were generated by others, which were often heavily weighted toward certain fields.

Previously, business letters had been used as examples -- which suggested that words like "enclosed" and "remittance" were very frequently used. The reality was that MOST people rarely used the first and never used the second -- and certainly not in their daily speech.

Access to the listing that Davies generated is a very useful guide to which words should receive the most attention, in the learning and teaching of any good shorthand system.

It is very well known that there are a few dozen words that are in virtually every sentence, written or spoken, in English. (In that first sentence, for example, there are words like "It, is, very, well, that, there, are, or, in" -- which illustrates my point.)

For that reason, any GOOD shorthand system concentrates on making sure that list of words can be written very quickly and legibly in that system. They should be intuitive in formation, preferably suggestive of the word they stand for, not be completely arbitrary.

They should should be easy to write and join in common phrases. For note-takers or beginners in the system, even if they only replace such words in their regular writing, it can speed up their work considerably, even if most of it is still being written in regular longhand.

If learners are expected to memorize a bunch of random outlines that don't seem to have anything to do with what they MEAN, it's much harder for them both to recall them to write, under the pressure of speed, as well as to read them back later.

Also, it makes much more SENSE to abbreviate such words as much as possible, so the writer can dash them off in a split second, and have more time to devote to the writing of unusual words, names, or places. Because these basic words will be needed in virtually every sentence, they will often come to mind more readily.

In contrast, if there's a special abbreviation for a word you rarely need, chances are you won't even remember it, on the rare occasion you suddenly have to write it.

th thing tha eos ab tdu os topn a daere. ths osnt eleg (nothing os eleg,
sens thrern lngr ne los), b ef detekt tos rse srtn tha twb pnsht b deth,
or tlest b 25 ers n a fost-labr kamp. Winston fetd a nib ntth pnholdr
nd sukt t tgt th gres of. th pen os a arkaic ns/m, seltm y/t evn f sig,
nd eh prkrd un, frtive nd ithsm dfkte, simpe ksf a feling thath
butif kreme papr tsrvd tub ritn on ith a rel nib nstdo bing skracht ith a
ink-pnsil. Aktee eosn yd t raeting b hand. Apat fm ve sh/nots, tos ysh t dicta
eving ntth sp-raer ch os ok mpos fs pr prp. edipt th pn ntth ink nd thn
fotrt f js a sknd. A trmor hgn thrus bauls. tmark th papr osth tsaesiv
act. n smo clmse les erot: Aprl 4, 1984.

I've been posting quotes every week in PHONORTHIC Shorthand, but just for a change, I'll try it in FLOW instead. I like the smooth and graceful curves and arabesques you get in the system, and the outlines are still very brief and legible.

In the quote, S is "is", NT is "not", EN is "when" and N-ING is "nothing". If you've studied Gregg, all those abbreviations will make sense to you. I also used a final SH for the final "-tion" like Gregg does.

As always, the attribution is the trickiest part because it uses sounds in unusual contexts -- and this one was also a French name. I tried writing ANT-WAN for the first name, but it was an awkward joining, when the combination of NTW in English is quite unusual.

Then I decided to try it with OI and I like it better.

Have you tried the FLOW GENERATOR yet? I have and was really impressed. In the search window, you enter phonetically the sentence you want to write, or you can use the LETTERS for each word that the Dictionary provides -- and like magic, it shows you how to write it.

(His generator can handle two other systems as well, so be sure it's set for FLOW.)

https://jvita.github.io/abbrv/writer.html

When I first tried it, I just typed in the usual "Now is the time for all good men..." phrase that's so often used, but it showed the word "all" with BOTH the Ls in the spelling.

When English spelling is such an inconsistent and illogical MESS, the input needs to be written PHONETICALLY -- which is how the dictionary can be helpful.

Quote 91 from this week, which was

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. — Benjamin Franklin" This was reduced phonetically to:

ne ful k kretss, kdm nd kp nd mo fuls d.
— Benjamn Franklen

If any of that surprises you, it's because that's how the words were represented in Anniversary Gregg, with NE for "any", K for "can", and KP for "complain", and so on. This results in the sentence written in Flow like this:

A lot of work was done by u/LeadingSuspect5855 in producing a 6,000-word DICTIONARY for FLOW Shorthand, which can be opened in a variety of platforms.

It's based on the theory of Anniversary Gregg Shorthand, since that version of the system is still unrivalled, in terms of SPEED and ACCURACY, among penwritten systems. But FLOW uses an alphabet of strokes that makes more sense to me. This means that anyone who learned any early version of Gregg will find the theory contains no surprises.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tko9_FmepJf1r4g0KCY6ZoLgO920ZMW3/view?usp=sharing

For each word listed, the dictionary lists the LETTERS that will be needed to write it, following the theory of Anniversary Gregg. These letters can be used as input into his FLOW GENERATOR, which I'll write about next.