This is surely a first for shorthand on the web – a newsheet web-page rendered entirely in shorthand. [caption id="attachment_67" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="a newspaper in shorthand"][/caption] Prof Waldir Cury runs the excellent Taquigrafia website in Brazil and is an expert shorthand practitioner. Keen to help his students improve their shorthand skills, he has now taken the plunge and developed an entire web page in shorthand. And he now plans to release a new newspage entirely in shorthand each month! In his note to the MSN Gregg Shorthand group, Prof Cury said: “I invite you to take a look at the new page of my website: a whole page in Shorthand. “Its name: “Shorthand Newspaper”.  Every month a new page will be launched.  The aim: to help the online students to develop their shorthand reading. “I hope you like the idea.  And I also hope that many other shorthand website owners will do the same, so that we can have in a very short time many shorthand pages like that – using different systems. “The system used in the “Shorthand Newspaper” is the Maron System, a Brazilian one.  So, I hope you will like it.” Waldir – for what it is worth I think it is an inspired idea ...

Shorthand World readers frequently ask us which are the best books for learning shorthand. There are hundreds of excellent books out there which will help you learn or improve, so choosing from them is no mean feat. But we’ll have a stab at naming our top ten books for Pitman and Teeline. To find out more about any of the books below just hover your cursor over them! Teeline Fast (Teeline) Teeline Revised Edition (Teeline) Teeline Gold: Speed Ladder (Teeline Gold) Teeline Gold: Word List (Teeline Gold) Teeline Gold: Student Pack (Teeline) Shorthand Pitman 2000 (Teach Yourself) Pitman 2000: Shorthand Short Course Pitman New Era Shorthand: Anniversary Edition Pitman 2000: Shorthand First Course (Pitman 2000 Shorthand) Shorthand, Pitman’s: New Era: Facility Drills (Anniversary Edition) But what do you think? What are your top ten books? Why not drop us a line to let us know!

Thanks to Bill and Patricia for inspiring this post! As Bill points out the Dasi pen firm went out of business ( I think in the 1970s?) which left the entire world of shorthand worse off as a result. Luckily, if we’re prepared to look slightly further than the nearest stationery shop and its vast range of biros, there’s still some excellent pens out there. One of the best I’ve tried is the fantastic Pelikan Steno pen. It is incredibly responsive, ideal for shorthand, feels well weighted in the hand, and the ink flow is superb even at higher speeds. I don’t know whether Pelikan still makes this model, but they can be picked up second hand from specialists. Pelikan make a number of other pens and I have to admit to being a bit partial to this brand as they always feel right in my hand for some reason. I’ve also become particularly enamoured with the Pilot V5 (and V7) which is a super glider of a pen across a page. I actually tested this against a standard biro once and found my shorthand speed was a good 5-7wpm higher with the Pilot than the standard biro (done using a 120wpm exercise ...