Pitman's Shorthand is written entirely by sound and ignores the longhand spelling.

• There are no silent marks like the K in longhand "knot" or the GH in “laugh” or the W in "write".

• The strokes of shorthand represent sounds only, they do not replace the letters of the alphabet, e.g. “cough” = K-O-F, “know” = N-O, “lamb” = L-A-M

• The R sound is always shown, even though many speakers do not pronounce it in some words e.g. "farm" "war"

The shorthand representation of a word is called an "outline".

Consonants are represented by a line, called a “stroke”.

Vowels are represented by dots, dashes and other brief signs written close up to the stroke and sometimes joined to the stroke.

Writing by sound is called "phonetic" writing. As this shorthand only represents the specific meaningful sounds (phonemes) of English, it can more accurately be called a phonemic system, although there a few methods within the system for representing a limited range of non-English sounds.

CONSONANTS

There are 24 consonant sounds in English. Shorthand has 26 strokes to represent these, with the strokes for R and H having two stroke forms, written in different directions. Each stroke has one pronunciation only.

The strokes are straight lines and quarters of a circle, each written at a specific angle in relation to the line on the notepad:

Eight of the strokes are paired, with one written with a thin line and the other with a thick line:

Thin = unvoiced = vocal cords not vibrating e.g. P F

Thick = voiced = vocal cords vibrating e.g. B V

Hold your hand on your throat when saying P and B and you can feel the vibration on the B - this is what is meant by voiced.

There are no thick upstrokes, as that it too awkward to write.

The strokes can be halved, doubled, or have circles, loops or hooks added to the ends, to signify extra consonant sounds.

VOWELS

The vowels signs are dots, dashes and other small marks written in different places close to the side of the stroke. There are:

12 plain vowel signs

The short vowels are: bat bet bit tock tuck took

The long vowels are: pa pay pea saw so sue (=soo)

(Note: The vowels in "pay" and "so" may sound as diphthongs in some accents of English)

4 diphthong signs (two vowel sounds spoken as one syllable) e.g. sign, boy, how, few

The  diphthong signs are modified with an extra tick, to represent triphones (the diphthong plus one other vowel, thus making 2 syllables) e.g. science, buoyant, flower, fewer

2 diphone signs (two vowels spoken as two syllables) e.g. layer, keying, bluer, poem

In shorthand, the term “vocalise” means to write the vowel signs in the outline. An unvocalised outline is one where the vowel signs are omitted.

The Reminder Chart on the Downloads General page lists all the consonant strokes and vowels, for constant reference whilst learning and revising.
 

SHORT FORMS & CONTRACTIONS

Very common words are represented by short forms which are a single stroke or vowel sign, and are related to the sound of the word e.g.

• Stroke B for "be"

• Stroke D for "do"

• Stroke K for "come"

• Vowel sign AW for "all"

• Vowel sign U for "you"

• Vowel sign OW for "how"

Longer common words are represented by contractions, the same as is done in longhand, using one or two syllables of the word e.g:

• "gov" for "government"

• "inf" for "inform"

• "maks" for "maximum"

• "rep" for "represent"

• "reg" for "regular"

The basic system covers writing every word of English, so if the writer cannot remember a short form or contraction, or comes across an unknown word, the entire word can be written in full, according to the normal rules, instead of using the short form or contraction.

POSITION WRITING

The vowel signs are written to the side of the stroke in one of three places - beginning, middle or end - to signify different vowel sounds. These are called first, second and third place. Therefore the same dot or dash in a different place against the stroke means a different vowel.

The stroke itself is written in one of three positions - the first up or downstroke of the outline goes above, on or through the line - to match the place of the first vowel sound of the word. In this way the first vowel of the word is indicated by the position of the outline in relation to the notepad line.

Because of position writing of outlines, and various shortening methods that indicate the presence or absence of vowels, in practice most vowel signs can be left out and this, along with short forms and contractions, is what enables high speeds to be achieved. However, it is possible to write any word completely fully if the writer cannot recall the dictionary version, or if it is felt there might be some ambiguity when reading back.

PHRASING

Outlines can be joined to make fairly short phrases, such as "it is" "I am" "of us" "to him" "thank you" "for your" "you can be" "we have had". Longer phrases can be made by omitting obvious syllables, such as "I have (re)ceived" "for your (con)sideration" "taken (into) account" "more (or) less".

Phrases always match how the words are spoken together, and phrasing is only done if the outlines join well and clearly. Shorthand can be written much faster using correct phrasing, and also makes it easier to read back. However, over-zealous phrasing does hinder both writing and reading back, so the beginner is advised to exercise caution and restrict their phrasing to the examples given here and in the various instruction books that are available.

MNEMONICS

These mnemonics are given on the appropriate Lesson pages:

Short vowels - That Pen Is Not Much Good

Long vowels - Pay May We All Go Too

Diphthongs - I Enjoy Loud Music

Tick Hay - HoMeLieR

Strokes halved and thickened for D - MaNLieR

Clockwise Hooks: bRaiN, cRaNe

Anticlockwise Hooks: bLuFF, gLoVe

Diphones The slanting arrowhead points: Dot Down, Dash Up

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