This fascinating article told how Woodrow Wilson’s seal ring carried his name in shorthand and how this would be used to stamp the American leader’s name onto the treaty document.

Here’s the article:

Shorthand news story about Woodrow Wilson

There are a great many sources of excellent information about Wilson out there. I understand he used a form of shorthand called Graham, which was derived from Pitman and now virtually extinct.

His deification appears to have happened in the Indian city of Chennai. In his fascinating article for The National, reporter Samanth Subramanian tells how: “The entrances to many buildings in this southern Indian city are graced by small shrines, miniature temples, almost, to one or the other of the Hindu pantheon’s gods and goddesses.

“Among the most extraordinary of these sits in the courtyard of a building in the crowded neighbourhood of T Nagar. Resting on a plinth is a garlanded, foot-high bronze statuette of a lushly bearded 19th-century Englishman named Isaac Pitman.

“The building houses the headquarters of the Stenographers’ Guild, which explains the devotion to Pitman, a vegetarian and teetotaller who was knighted in 1894 and died aged 84 in 1897. In 1837, he developed the most widely used form of shorthand, a system of strokes, hooks, dots and squiggles, based on phonetics, which enabled stenographers to transcribe speeches with great speed and accuracy.”

Please check out the rest of this great article for the full story. The honour paid to Sir Isaac appears to be well supported. Responding to the article, Ramesh Menon said: “It was a fitting tribute to thousands of stenographers world-wide, who once ruled the administrative part of private and government offices and establishments.

“Just three decades away, we were in a world when aspiring students rushed to numerous short-hand and typewriting institutes and pass out from there improving their English skills as well as a handy tool to start their career away from home. The short-hand learning methodology rightly provided the person a correct grip and grasp on the language as well as enabled him to concise what is dictated or heard in person.

“In addition, those days, it proved an opportunity to read English literature and learn more about the nuances of the language and its grammar requirements. This field of technical education produced several eminent administrators who silently and efficiently supported great leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and JRD Tata.”

Perhaps Pitman Training in the UK might consider something similar…???

His main points are that shorthand is a less trusted means of capturing what was said than a tape/digital device, that shorthand is a pain to learn and that people develop their own shorthands as they use it (to the extent that, he says, most shorthand users gradually develop a “personal shorthand that only they really understand”).

I think he is right on all three points. Shorthand is less respected than it once was. That’s partly because it is less prevalent in society per se and, in a world of increasing, rolling, 24-hour visual media, our relationship with the written word has changed. It is difficult to learn. Teeline is far easier to learn than Pitman, but it’ll still take about four months to get to 100wpm. And yes, we all develop our own “shorthands” (though most people can read the shorthand of others and work out the idiosyncracies as they go).

Given all this, Greenslade asks the central question thus: “In this age of sophisticated recording devices, is shorthand any longer worth all the time and trouble it takes to learn it?”

He appears to be saying no, and calling on the courts to allow reporters to sit in with digital/tape devices.

I’ve seen lawyers and judges sitting in court with laptops for a few years now and cannot really understand why us reporters cannot do the same. Neither can I understand why, if the second compnonent of justice is that it is seen to be done, why the courts would not allow for every means of capturing what is said in court to be used – visual or sound recording etc.

However, I do not, and never have, seen the tape vs shorthand question as an either/or issue. I use shorthand because it is useful, quick, simple and not susceptible to the vagaries of electronic circuitry. It has helped me do my job quickly and efficiently for many years. For most general reporting purposes shorthand is absolutely the perfect means of taking a note of what is said, what has happened etc.

When a story is more sensitive or the interviewee potentially more difficult (potentially litigious) I have used tape as well as shorthand. Why? Because impuning a journalist’s integrity with claims of being misquoted is one of the most common fall-back positions of the caught out. It makes sense, where problems are foreseen, to use tape as well.

I would not want to use tape for every interview because I would struggle to get my job done. Listening back over reels of tape and taking down the words needed is an uneccessary doubling up of the reporting process.

So, yes, I’m with Greenslade on encouraging the courts to allow journalists to use whatever recording devices they choose. I however, would probably still use shorthand for 99% of the time.

What do you think?