Shorthand. A bitch to learn, but invaluable once you’ve done so.
Yet it’s a skill that some think is becoming obsolete because of the increased use of recording devices.
As I’ve been telling clients for years, if a hack puts a dictaphone in front of you in an interview that’s a good thing. Because their writing may well be so bad that if there’s a dispute you probably won’t be able to read the notes back anyway. Shorthand is another dimension – few people can read everything someone else write in shorthand. When I learned it, I was shown how to leave gaps so you could doctor the notes afterwards if you ‘needed to’.
Sneaky tricks aside, shorthand has been a great asset for me since I went through the pain of getting a 100 words-per-minute Teeline certificate in 1992. It means you can take verbatim notes, unless the speaker talks unnaturally fast. It means you can listen more in client meetings because your note-taking is faster. It means journalists give you a little (just a little) mutual respect. And it intimidates people who wonder what the hell you’ve just written about them.
Yet the luminaries on the Today programme this morning told how fewer journalists and other users write shorthand these days, preferring to use recording gadgets. I can see the point, but in some situations there is simply no substitute for shorthand. The level of concentration means you listen better, and while I’d stop short of saying recording devices are lazy journalism, they’re an aide alongside shorthand in my view, rather than a replacement.
Today’s trainee journalists, interestingly, seem to agree. The number of them wanting to learn shorthand is on the rise.
On Today the debate covered Pitman versus Teeline. I’m Teeline all the way, the light and dark strokes thing makes Pitman a minefield. So no I can’t decipher John Humphrys’ shorthand test from earlier today (below):
But can you decipher my (more-or-less perfectly-formed) Teeline below?
If only you could tweet in Teeline. That’d sort the wheat from the chaff.
I too passed the 100wpm teeline test, but don’t use it regularly anymore and am struggling to decipher your message!
Is it:
There are some real pillocks?pricks? in digital pubilc relations these days
?
Tried one of these?
http://www.livescribe.com
Hate to say it, but synching written notes with audio is rather fantastic – plus you get a digital copy – and there is a plug in for auto converting your written notes to text.
I got one a few months ago and it has paid for itself several times over. And no, I’m not handling their PR!
Leila – I am shocked that you would think I would write such a thing!
Interesting Mr Smith. I will give this a try – useful for notetaking, but the problem is still being able to write fast enough to record all the specifics of the spoken word. I’m hopefully not being too nostalgic, I just enjoy being able to write things that very few people can read and being able to quote it back to them verbatim. It’s invaluable for media training in particular. Then again, we should use dictaphones more in media training too.
Having let my shorthand lapse in favour of digital devices, I feel like a kid who’s traded his classic Subbuteo collection for Fifa 09 on the Xbox – a game any chump can play.
Now it’s only really essential four journalists who report on court proceedings. But it’s such a useful skill, and in my view miles more satisfying to transcribe than sitting through hours of audio, battling background noise to pick out a quote.