a true reporting style is altogether unsuitable for general personal use. The simplicity and fulness of a true personal style is altogether impossible for reporting practice. The unsuitability of a business style for reporting or personal use differs nowise in kind but only in degree.

GODFREY DEWEY, New York State Shorthand Reporters' Association.

SHORTHAND, History of. The early history of this art is closely allied with palæography, and it has been traced into the mists of antiquity. Antiquarians have tried to connect it with hieroglyphics and to show that it was used more than 1,000 years before Christ by the Persians, Egyptians and Hebrews. Abbreviated writing, to take down lectures and also for the preservation of poems recited at the Pythean, Nemean and Olympic games, was practised by the early Greeks, and there are specimens of ancient Greek notæ, or shorthand, in the Vatican Library, at Rome, the Bibliothèque Nationale, at Paris, and the British Museum.

Ancient History.—The definite existence of shorthand reporting dates in the century preceding the Christian era. Tiro, the accomplished freedman and amanuensis of Cicero, was in 63 B.C. the first known practitioner of the art. He reported speeches of his master, which were afterward revised by the orator; and as note Tironiana became the established name for shorthand writing its invention was subsequently ascribed to him. At that period Rome was drawing from Greece her stores of learning and art, and Tiro's system was probably an adaptation from the Greek. Plutarch informs us in his life of Cato the Younger that Cicero distributed notarii (shorthand reporters) in various parts of the Senate House on the occasion of the vote as to the fate of Catiline, the chief purpose being to take down the speeches of Cæsar and Cato. The text of those speeches may be given by Sallust in his history of the Catilinian conspiracy, chapters 51-53, or the historian may have followed the example of Thucydides and embodied in them his conception of the character and policy of the two foremost senators. Mæcenas, the famous statesman, courtier and patron of literature, introduced some improvements in shorthand, and, according to Dion Cassius, instructed many in the art through his freedman Aquila. Seneca afterward increased the number of notations to a total of 5,000. Scalinger made a collection of the notes of Tiro, Seneca and others, which is appended to the great work of Janus Gruterus, published at Heidelberg, in 1603.

An illustrious German scholar, Ulrich, in 1817 analyzed the Tironian notes and his analysis shows that Roman shorthand, though a strain on the memory, answered the practical purposes of stenography quite as well as the systems in vogue in the early part of the 19th century, such, for example, as the one sketched by Charles Dickens from his own experience in the 38th chapter of David Copperfield.' are informed by Suetonius that the Emperor Augustus taught the art to his grandchildren and that the Emperor Titus was a skilful stenographer. Martial, who lived in the time of Nero, has left an epigram upon a shorthand

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writer: Currant verba licet, manus est velocior illis. Among ancient papyri discovered 100 miles south of Cairo in 1903 by Professors Grenfell and Hunt, there is a contract with a writer of tachygraphy, made 137 A.B., whereby a slave boy was to be taught shorthand for 120 drachmæ ($24); 40 drachmæ were to be paid down, 40 more on satisfactory evidence of the progress of the boy and the last 40 when he had become proficient.

Shorthand seems to have been much used by the early Christians. It is supposed that Saint Paul dictated to amanuenses several of his epistles, notably that to the Colossians, where Tychicus acted as shorthand writer and Onesimus as transcriber. We know that Origen in the 3d century was assisted in the preparation of his 'Commentaries on the Scriptures' by clerks who wrote in shorthand from his dictation. Saint Augustine refers to an episcopal assemblage held at Carthage late in the 4th century, at which eight stenographers were employed in relays of two. About the same period the poet Ausonius praised a youth who could write faster than his master could dictate, and, with poetic license, even faster than he could think; and in another poem expressed his admiration of the skill of the stenographers of the time. Charlemagne, king of the Franks for 46 years and likewise Roman emperor during the 14 years preceding his death in 814, possessing an amount of learning unusual in his age, endeavored to become proficient in writing Tironian notes. But the lingua Latina was fast giving place to the lingua Romana, from which the modern Romanic languages of Europe sprang. At the Council of Rheims in 813, priests were admonished to address the people in the rustic tongue. Nor was a knowledge of the art confined to the Western civilization. A translation by Professor Flügel, of Dresden, from the Arabic, narrates how a Chinese in 923 A.D., who had acquired Arabic speech and writing in less than five months, took down in shorthand from the lips of his teachers 16 books of Galen.

Modern History. The first modern shorthand work was printed in London in 1588 and dedicated by its author, Dr. Timothy Bright, to Queen Elizabeth. The first French publication, that of Jacques Cossard, appeared in 1651. The oldest German system was published in 1679. Gurney's is the oldest living system of English shorthand. It was first issued by Mason in 1672 and improved by Thomas Gurney in 1750. Taylor's system appeared in 1786, subsequent editions of which bore the name of Odell, Harding and so on. This system has a remarkable history of successful adaptation to Continental languages. Bertin adapted it to the French and Danzar in 1801 adapted it to the German language. Marti's tachygraphy was an adaptation of Taylor's alphabet to the Spanish language and was first published in 1800. By a royal ordinance in 1802 a chair for shorthand was established in the university at Madrid and Marti named as professor. The cortes of Cadiz first had an official shorthand report of its proceedings in 1810. Marti's tachygraphy was in 1828 applied to the Italian language by his son, who also adapted it to the Portuguese. Pereira had also, early in the century, adapted Taylor's alphabet to the Portuguese. The intro

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duction of shorthand into Mexico and the countries of South America followed these adaptations. Amanti, an Italian, adapted Taylor's shorthand to his own language and as modified by Delpino it is now used by the official corps of the Chamber of Deputies. The three prevailing French systems are those of Prevost, Duploye and Prépéan, the first named being a modification of Taylor. It is estimated that the bibliography of shorthand comprises 16,000 volumes, exclusive of reissues or editions. A valuable contribution to the English branch of this subject has been made by Julius Ensign Rockwell, published by the government as Circular of Information No. 2, Bureau of Education, Washington (1884), and Circular No. 1 (1893). The latter contains a reproduction of 112 English shorthand alphabets, extending from the first alphabetic system, that of Willis, in 1602, to the Duployan method adapted by Pernin in 1882. In 1888 Light Line Phonography,' issued later as 'Gregg Shorthand,' was introduced.

A court of law in England in 1740 took the initial step in appointing an official shorthand writer. The next instance of the public recognition of shorthand in that country occurred in 1789, when the House of Commons, during the trial of Warren Hastings, called the shorthand writer to the bar and required him to read from his notes the exact words used by Mr. Burke, and thereupon resolved that Mr. Burke had exceeded his instructions in accusing Sir Elijah Impey of murder. The publication of Hansard's Debates was begun in 1803 and has become a general system of reports of representative bodies in Great Britain and her colonies. It is compiled from newspaper reports, supplemented by special reports. This system is closely followed in some of the colonies, as in New Zealand, while a method similar to that pursued by our national legislature has been adopted by the Canadian Parliament. The Hansard's report is semi-official, the speeches being submitted to members for revision and it is subsidized by the House of Commons. The official shorthand writing for the British Parliament is confined to the committee reporting, in which Pitman's and Gurney's systems have long had governmental recognition.

A census taken in 1914 of the systems of shorthand used in the Press Gallery of the British Parliament showed that out of 137 writers 128 wrote the Pitman system, 4 the Taylor system, 2 the Gurney system and 3 the Sloan-Duployan system.

The American colonies were not far behind the mother country in the use of shorthand. The Virginia Convention of 1788, called to deliberate on the ratification of the Constitution of the United States, was reported in shorthand in a meritorious manner by David Robertson, of Petersburg, Va., and in 1903 the National Shorthand Reporters' Association of the United States erected a tablet in Saint Augustine's Church, Philadelphia, to the memory of Thomas Lloyd, the official reporter of the National House of Representatives, 1st session 1st Congress. This tablet bears the following inscription:

Captain Thomas Lloyd, Author, Soldier, Patriot.
The father of American shorthand reporting.
14 August 1756-19 January 1827.

In 1834 Franz Xavier Gabelsberger, secretary to the Ministry in Bavaria, brought out his invention and in 1837 Isaac Pitman, of Bath, England, gave to the world the first edition of phonography or sound hand. Gabelsberger's system, with adanatation, has been widely introduced in Austra-Hungary, Switzerland, Russia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Holland, Belgium, Serbia and Rumania, although in some of these countries modifications of the Stolzean method predominate. Wilhelm Stolze published his system in 1841 and it is used in the Prussian Chamber, which is the sole exception to the official use of Gabelsberger's shorthand in Germany. In Russia a translation of Gabelsberger is officially employed in the imperial Senate, the Court of Cassation and other law courts. There was, of course, a gradual development of the art down to Isaac Pitman's invention. Dr. Bright's system was cumbrous and followed the vertical style of Chinese writing; but he indicated a present particle by two final dots just as Isaac Pitman nearly three centuries afterward denoted it by one.

Phonetics. The phonetic principle was first applied to English shorthand by John Willis, in 1602, and it was further developed from time to time; but it remained for Isaac Pitman to make it a complete basis; in other words, to invent phonography or sound hand. As there are in the English language 43 distinct sounds, represented by 26 letters, Isaac Pitman adopted an extended alphabet by which consonants are indicated by simple geometrical strokes, straight or curved, the light sounds denoted by light strokes and the heavy ones by corresponding heavy strokes. The leading heavy vowels ar represented by six heavy dots and a like num ber of heavy dashes, placed at the beginning, middle or end of the strokes and before or after as they precede or follow the consonants. The same course is followed with the light vowels. Diphthongs are provided for by a combination of dash forms and by a small semicircle differently formed and placed in different positions. Circles, hooks and loops are employed in distinct offices. As an illustration, the word bought is composed of three sounds represented by six letters. It is spelled phonetically b aw t, and in phonography it is written with two straight strokes joined, one sloping and the other perpendicular and a disjoined dash. In rapid writing the dash is omitted, as an important feature of the art in reporting is the use of consonant outlines, omitting vowels. It follows that shorthand is more readily adapted to a consonantal than a vowel language and for this reason French is easy and Japanese difficult. In every case, however, many brief forms, more or less arbitrary, are used for words of frequent occurrence.

Pitman System.- As has been stated, verbatim reporting in the English-speaking world dates from the invention of phonography by Sir Isaac Pitman. In recognition of his eminent service, the honor of knighthood was conferred on him by Queen Victoria. There was a celebration in London in 1887 known as the Golden Jubilee of Phonography, in which an array of talent was displayed which came as a surprise to men of letters on both sides of the Atlantic, who were unaware of the accomplishments nec

essary to make the career of a shorthand reporter successful. Sir Isaac died in 1897, after having witnessed the introduction of phonography into every land that Anglo-Saxon civilization has penetrated. The inventor received great aid from his brothers, but that of his youngest brother was conspicuous and American. Benn Pitman came to the United States in 1853 and established in Cincinnati a phonographic institute and a publishing house, which are still in successful operation. For many years Pitman had an able associate in the person of Jerome B. Howard. In 1903 Benn Pitman having spent 50 years in the dissemination and development in the United States of his brother's invention, the National Shorthand Association, which met in Cincinnati, made an appropriate celebration of the golden jubilee of his labors.

The following is the complete alphabet of the Isaac Pitman system as presented in "Course in Isaac Pitman Shortland" (1918).

THE PHONOGRAPHIC ALPHABET.

(BY ISAAC PITMAN.)

CONSONANTS.

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How well the inventor succeeded in his realization of these first two resolves may be seen in the representation in the next column and the history of the dissemination of the art proves that this third has also been crowned with success.

Pitman's phonography has not only been successfully adapted to such languages as the Spanish and Dutch, but even to the Malagasy for official used in Madagascar, and in 1902 Edward Gantlett made an adaptation to the Japanese language under the title Phonographica Japonica.' In Japan and China a method of tachygraphy is generally employed. The separate marks which united form a character in ordinary writing are made by a single stroke of the pen, the contours being traced regardless of details. In India, Navina, of the Punjab University, invented an alphabet of new Hindu characters, which is said to form the basis of a rapid and legible system of shortland. Other systems, based on Isaac Pitman's, have been introduced in the United States by Elias Longley, Andrew J. Graham and James E. Munson. Mr. Graham brought out the first edition of his 'Standard Phonography) in 1858.

DIPHTHONGS. Iow or Ju

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To these brief elementary signs, which represent every distinct elementary sound in English, are added abbreviating adjuncts and principles that enable the hand to keep pace with thought. When Isaac Pitman invented his shorthand alphabet and with the assistance of distinguished educators and practitioners improved it, he had a three-fold object in view:

1. To give those who had memoranda to make, a more elementary method of writing, plain, simple, easily acquired in a few weeks, and capable of being executed at the rate of 50 or 60 words a minute.

2. To develop a style of writing for the use of business men, ministers, physicians, authors, scientific investigators, and others who would acquire through a few months' study the ability to write 100 words per minute, with the ease of speech and the legibility of print.

3. To establish a system of reporting for those who sought to record the eloquent orations of public speakers at the rate of 300 words a minute when required.

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"I wish every man had such an education-every young man especially. And if either of my sons had lived, and I had trained him, as I should have tried to do, to be a great and good farmer, I should have wanted to send him at least six months to a Business School, to give him the aptitude and habits and forms of a thorough Business Man." Horace Greeley.

Official Use. The enlarged use of shorthand, owing to the demands of State legislatures, courts and the business world, is well known. The National Shorthand Reporters' Association has an executive committee_composed of reporters from 35 States, 2 Territories and the District of Columbia, (See SHORTHAND STANDARDIZATION). The Senate of the United States in 1848 made a contract for a verbatim report of its debates and proceedings and the same course was adopted by the House of Representatives in the following year. Before 1848 the Congressional Globe contained an abstract of the debates and such speeches in full as members wrote or had specially reported. In 1873 Congress adopted the existing method and transferred the official publication of the proceedings from private contract to the government printing office. By this method each house employs a corps of five

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reporters, the Senate paying to its corps $25,000 a year and the reporters of the House receiving $5,000 a year each. In addition, the House of Representatives employs a corps of official reporters of committees.

Shorthand has reached the highest possible development in every country where a parliamentary form of government has obtained. Turkey possessed no system of shorthand until her accession to the list of constitutional states, brought about by the reform movement of 1876. The Turkish Parliament met in 1877 and much difficulty was found in securing reports. Stenographers_were employed to translate on the spot into French the speeches delivered in Turkish, but in this work the note-takers failed. The speakers were then required to reduce their remarks to writing before delivery; but it was found that such a rule could not be applied to a deliberative body. Efforts were then made to invent a stenographic machine, but this proved a failure there as elsewhere. Gabelsberger's system subsequently was translated into Turkish by Grünbaum.

The Continental countries of Europe, Great Britain and the United States now make instruction in shorthand a material and essential part of education.

CLARENCE A. PITMAN.

SHORTHAND, Science of. Shorthand Empiric. Modern shorthand has developed from the earliest times down almost to the present day (1919), wholly as an empiric art, lacking those standards of measurement and accompanying definition of terms which constitute the first essential of any science—a striking anomaly in this scientific age.

Resultant Confusion.- As a direct consequence of this condition more than a thousand different systems of shorthand have been published for English alone, which for longhand has in effect but one. No less striking is the fact that those systems most prominent in the United States to-day differ not only in their specific alphabets and outlines and minor rules but also in their most fundamental conceptions of the nature and use of shorthand material - differences as marked as though the steam railroads of the country should run on one rail or three while the electric rapid transit of the cities ran on two.

Controversial Data. This lack of recognition of scientific principles which, recognized or not, must underlie the practice of any useful art, has developed an immense mass of controversial literature, in which system A is compared with systems B and C, or system X with systems Y and Z, always to the latter's disadvantage - each document conclusive and final in itself, but each directly and irreconcilably contradictory to the other. The inevitable result of this futile recrimination has been to increase rather than decrease confusion and strife, and to make organized scientific progress impossible.

Efforts to Formulate Science.- Various attempts have been made in the past to determine the basic principles which, systematically related, constitute the science of shorthand as distinct from the practice of the art. Of these, the most noteworthy was the formation of The Shorthand Society in London in 1881, with the avowed purpose of "the study of the

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science and literature of shorthand and the investigation and discussion of the principles which should govern the construction of systems of shorthand and abbreviated longhand, adapted, if possible, for general use." transactions of this society (50 numbers of the magazine Shorthand), which lasted for a dozen years till disrupted by the factional strife of system partisans, contain many sincere efforts to establish such basic general principles of shorthand unfortunately in most cases too specific in their application to particular types of systems to have the general value for which they strove.

The outstanding feature of the society's efforts is undoubtedly the work of Edwin Guest, 1836-1919) which reached the point of propounding and roughly grouping 49 genuinely single and separate propositions and definitions under the general head of "Shorthand principles worthy of general acceptation," before further organized progress was suspended by the disintegration of the society.

Equally able and sincere though less detailed is the notable paper of Prof. J. D. Everett, "On the principles that govern the construction of a system of shorthand," read before the 1887 International Shorthand Congress at London. Various other statements have been put forth in the name of shorthand science, but with rare and fragmentary exceptions they prove on examination to be at best a list of unsubstantiated personal opinions, at worst a catalogue of personal prejudices.

Science of Shorthand. The science of shorthand, presented before the 1918 convention of the New York State Shorthand Reporters Association, the oldest shorthand organization of America, as a part of the work of the Committee on Shorthand Standards marks the first systematically comprehensive formulation of the fundamental principles of shorthand science. It is an attempt to classify, define and where necessary discuss the single separate factors involved in the construction of any shorthand system, so far as they could be ascertained by reading, conference or original research; with out regard to their bearing on any particular system past, present or future. Although necessarily neither complete nor final it may be considered substantially correct as far as it goes and sufficiently complete to be accepted as a guide.

Structure. The propositions of the science are classified under seven heads: 0 General considerations; 1 Phonetic or sounds; 2 Geometric or signs; 2:1 Assignment of signs to sounds; 3 Manual of writing; 4 Visual or reading; 5 Mental or remembering.

Each main head is subdivided into three classes: (a) Axioms and definitions - which should involve no scientific controversy at the present time; (b) Canons which are considcred proven or demonstrable but recognized as still subject to controversy in greater or less degree; (c) Theorems - put forward rather for discussion and investigation than for immediate acceptance.

The direct work of the science has been supplemented by extensive researches giving the relative frequency of every sound and the commoner syllables and words of English, and is being further supplemented by various experimental data on the relative facility of the possi

ble signs and sign combinations of shorthand writing and their relation to penmanship technique. Much more remains to be done, but the work is going forward under the direction of the leading State and national associations.

Limitations. Students of shorthand science will be struck by the absence from the science of any specific pronouncement on such leading questions of shorthand as: Whether to shade or not to shade stems; Whether to write stems on two, three or four distinct slopes; Whether to use the appendages for primary representation of vowels or for secondary representation of consonants. This is because such questions are not single separate factors of any shorthand problem, but are each a complex of a dozen or more important and inter-related factors, so that to pass judgment on such decisions would easily become dogmatic and enormously restrict the scope and usefulness of the science.

Purpose. The purpose of the science of shorthand is to provide those standards of measurement and their accompanying definition of terms essential to scientific shorthand progress; to be used analytically to determine the strength or weakness of existing systems, or synthetically to determine the construction of future shorthand systems.

Specific Propositions.- A few of the more important propositions of the science, illustrative of the plan and scope, are given below. The complete series to date (1919) is accessible in the 1918 Proceedings of the New York State Shorthand Reporters Association. first figure of each number refers to the main head noted above, the letter to the sub-class. The second figure is a serial number in each sub-class, for convenient reference.

The

0 a 4. No system of shorthand can conceivably be best in every important point, for several of the most important basic features are mutually incompatible. "Every fair minded person who has paid any attention to the relative merits of different systems, or who has himself tried his hand at system-making, knows that the best result can only be attained by judicious compromise. One advantage cannot be obtained in its highest degree without the sacrifice of other advantages, and no sound judgment can be arrived at by setting up one particular point of superiority as the sole test of excellence." (Everett).

O b 8. "Time, not space, is the proper measure of brevity." (Guest).

1 a 1. The total number of different sounds in spoken English can no more be determined than the total number of different colors in the spectrum, and for the same reason that they blend into one another by imperceptible degrees or shades.

1 a 2. A minimum number of sounds necessary to be distinguished for phonetic writing of English may be and has been conclusively determined. This minimum number is 40, counting diphthongs. (See table of comparative alphabets under SHORTHAND).

2 a 1. The simplest conceivable material for graphic purposes is composed of right lines and arcs of simple curves, whether of circular, elliptic or other assumed origin.

2 a 6. The principal material for modifying or supplementing the simplest straight and curved stems consists of circles, hooks and loops, small and large, initial and final, and, in

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the case of straight stems particularly, right and left.

2:1 a 2. Latham's second law: "2 That sounds within a determined degree of likeness be represented by signs within a determined degree of likeness; whilst sounds beyond a certain degree of likeness be represented by distinct and different signs, and that uniformly."

2:1 b 1. (Assignment of signs to sounds in a simple shorthand for general use). Must not suggest by geometric similarities phonetic relations contrary to fact.

3 a 2. The relative ease of the various strokes which are possible material for shorthand writing will be profoundly affected by the muscles chosen to perform the principal effort and control of writing, and by the position of holding the pen or pencil. It is therefore essential that instructions for pen position and muscles to be used be adapted to each other, and to the genius of the system to be written; or, conversely, that in the construction of a shorthand system these points be determined in advance of its analysis of other data.

3 a 4. Other things being equal, a shorthand which employs symbols of only one length, one thickness or one position, will be more facile than a system employing symbols of more than one length, thickness or position. In practice observation of all three of these restrictions would make impossible the condition of "other things being equal."

4 a 2. Other things being equal, a shorthand which, within the limits of clear distinction, employs symbols of more than one length, one thickness or one position, will be more legible than a system employing symbols of only one length, thickness or position.

5 a 1. "Rules should be simple, comprehensive, logical, and as nearly as possible free from exceptions." (Guest).

5 a 2. The less of a word or phrase is expressed or implied the more of it must be remembered.

5 a 6. Arbitrary abbreviations are always objectionable, but are least objectionable in words of most frequent occurrence; for the double reason that their economy is so much the more valuable, and their meaning so much the more readily remembered.

5 b 2. Words are most readily recognized by their first elements, next by their last elements and least by their middle elements.

Thoughful consideration of these and similar factors, studying their inter-relations and weighing their relative importance for the particular purpose in view, will go far toward assuring a more rational and constructive development and progress for the shorthand of the future.

GODFREY DEWEY,

New York State Shorthand Reporters' Association.

SHORTHAND STANDARDIZATION. In 1909 the National Shorthand Reporters Association appointed a committee "to standardize verbatim shorthand reporting, putting it on a thoroughly scientific basis." This committee, accepting as a starting point those signs and principles common to all Pitmanic shorthand systems, has given 10 years of arduous and unremunerated toil by some of the best reporters of the United States and Canada to