I’d always used notebooks for shorthand. Sure they varied in size over the years from the standard reporter’s pad to bound notebooks resembling the types flipped open by police officers at crime scenes. The one thing they all had in common was paper.

So when I began to hear fellow shorthand practitioners waxing lyrical about Wacom’s range of tablets, at first I assumed they’d stepped back into the dark ages and had taken to writing on great slabs of stone. Ultra-traditionalists, chalk and slate. The Flinstones. The fools.

But, as time went by, it emerged that tablets were no longer made of a naturally occurring aggregate of minerals but high grade plastics and lots of smoothe glassy bits. So this was what they’d been harping on about.

Installing the software is simple enough (as are the instructions). The pen, though it felt a little light and a tad chubby, sat correctly in the hand. Setting up the pen to interract with the screen was similarly simple.

Then came the sheer thrill of writing shorthand across a 19″ screen rather than a notepad page. Great. A computerised manifestation of Teeline grafitti. But something occured to me. What about Pitman? Because of the importance of stroke width, surely writing Pitman is not possible with an electronic pen. Actually not so. The pen’s pressure sensitivity can be set to the nth degree, so that should not (and was not) a problem.

So, the Wacom is great fun and saves the planet by removing the need to cut down trees for notepads. Possibly. But there’s a few issues I had with the wisdom of buying this undeniably fine piece of kit purely for shorthand. First of all, usage. Most shorthand practitioners use their shorthand as part of their work. Journalists carrying an interview outside in the pouring rain had better stick with notepads. Secretaries taking notes of meetings (unless they are wired up to a PC at the time – unlikely) similarly so. Plus, you can’t flick over to the next page as you can with a notepad.

Which takes me onto the point of Wacom tablets. This is an art/graphics device. I have no doubt it is incredibly useful for designers and artists. For shorthand though, while it is undoubtedly an awful lot of fun (and it looks and feels great), it is not (and doesn’t claim to be) a substitute for a notepad. And there’s also the price – £140 odd for this device is probably good value for those using it to the limits of its potential, but for pure shorthand use?

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