A History Of Short Hand Written In Phonography

Excerpt from A History of Shorthand The art of Phonography may be easily acquired. Experience has shown that its principles are mastered by most learners in a very short space of time, and that an hour's daily practice in reading and writing, for two or three months, will ensure toler able facility ih using it. The student is particularly cautioned against attempting to write with rapidity at the outset. When his hand has become accustomed to trace the simple geometric forms of the phonographic characters with correctness and ele gance, he will find no difficulty in writing them quickly but if he lets his anxiety to write fast overcome his resolution to write well, he will not only be longer in attaining real swiftness, but will always have to lament the illegibility of his writing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Isaac Pitman (1813-1897) lived a fascinating and varied life. He was born in England, and earned his teaching credential from the British and Foreign School Society. He began teaching in Lincolnshire. After marrying in 1835, he started his own school in Gloucestershire, where he taught for a few years before moving to Bath and starting another school there in 1839. More so than teaching perhaps, Pitman was interested in language, transmission and the printed word. He stopped teaching in 1843 in order to run his printing and binding business. As part of his business' outputs, he published his own works which forwarded the argument for standardized spelling, including Phonotypy in 1844. Previous to this, he published Sound-Hand, a book on a system of phonetically based shorthand. He began a distance learning course, arguably the first of its kind, where he would work with students on their shorthand through the mail, sending work and critiques to each student. His work was very well received; so much so that by 1886, a million copies of his work, The Phonographic Teacher, were sold. Pitman credited his ability to carry on so many pursuits to his adoption of a vegetarian diet and abstinence from alcohol. He was also devoutly a follower of Swedenborgianism. For all his activity, in 1894, he was knighted by Queen Victoria. History of Shorthand is written in shorthand, but the back of the book offers a basic look at the language, and transcribing the book provides and opportunity to learn the writing method.