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Shorthand   Listen
noun
Shorthand  n.  A compendious and rapid method or writing by substituting characters, abbreviations, or symbols, for letters, words, etc.; short writing; stenography.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shorthand" Quotes from Famous Books



... were waiting for them when they emerged from their room, and ecstatically announced, "We're all going, too. They want you to be witnesses, and Tabitha to take notes. No one else in town writes shorthand." ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown

... became half-an-hour. Domiloff at last lost patience and knocked at the door. Brand, who had just finished a shorthand copy of the treaty, and had tucked it within the inner sole of his boot, realized the fact that he had reached the end of ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... to pry apart the shells with her unhandy weapon far enough to nibble a wee bit at the cold and clammy world within. She knew no more shorthand than if she had been a graduate in stenography just let slip upon the world by a business college. So, not being able to stenog, she could not enter that bright galaxy of office talent. She was a free-lance typewriter and canvassed for ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... came up to the city," Peter went on in the gravelled walk of fact, "just to improve yourself in shorthand so you could get such a situation? I don't ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... long one indeed. There were almost as many conclusions and recommendations as there were speakers. And through it all Hilton and Sandra listened. They weighed and tested and analyzed and made copious notes; in shorthand and in the more esoteric characters of symbolic logic. And at ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... should be as simple as possible, and hence they looked about for some system which could be readily grasped by these ignorant people. It was necessary that the system be absolutely phonetic and understood easily. By adapting the system used in shorthand, of putting the vowel marks in different positions by the side of the consonant signs, Mr. Pollard and his assistant found that they could solve their problem. The signs for the consonants are larger than the vowel ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... fact as can a jury sitting by the order of the Chancellor; and I need not say the costs will go with their verdict, to say nothing of the damages, which may be heavy. On the other hand, an indictment is hazardous; and I think you can lose nothing by beginning with the suit. By having a shorthand writer at the trial, you may collect materials for an indictment, and also feel the pulse of the court; you can then confer upon the evidence with some counsel better versed in criminal law ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... *SHORTHAND* Writing thoroughly taught *by mail* or personally. *Situations procured* all pupils when competent. Send for circular. *W. G. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various

... according to the Department. In the Post Office alone, are Typists recruited by open competitive examination. The scale of salary is 20s. a week, rising in three years to 26s.: they then have the option of qualifying in shorthand, after which they can rise to 31s. per week. In the Post Office, however, the number allowed to qualify in this way is limited to 50 per cent. of the staff. The supervising posts are: Superintendent, 35s. a week, and Chief Superintendent, 40s. a week. No higher positions are ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... Stazza are quite as perfect for that world as our own systems are for ours. They have an alphabet, covering their needs in language, consisting of a series of strokes, curves and angles, somewhat resembling our shorthand systems. This language is identical in print or script, and is superior to our method of ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... handwriting that he was yours sincerely or affectionately or for ever. The father and daughter would have been quite content, apparently, to eat their dinner in silence, or with a few cryptic remarks expressed in a shorthand which could not be understood by the servants. But silence depressed Mrs. Hilbery, and far from minding the presence of maids, she would often address herself to them, and was never altogether unconscious of their approval or disapproval of her remarks. In ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... standing was on the east side; it belonged to the profligate Lord Baltimore, and was later occupied by the Duke of Bolton. The new Russell Hotel, at the corner of Guilford Street, and Pitman's School of Shorthand, in the south-eastern corner, are the only two buildings to note. A bronze statue of Francis, Duke of Bedford, executed by Westmacott, stands on the south side of the Square; this faces a similar statue of ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... out among the heathen,'" the traffic manager quoted jocosely, when the door closed behind the shorthand man. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... after." In like manner, it was at Louisville that Mr. Edison got an insight into the manner in which great political speeches are more frequently reported than the public suspects. "The Associated Press had a shorthand man travelling with President Johnson when he made his celebrated swing around the circle in a private train delivering hot speeches in defence of his conduct. The man engaged me to write out the notes from his reading. He came in loaded and on the verge of incoherence. We started ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... application of the method to a particular case was the essential thing, for it brought into view all the incidental difficulties, in meeting which all the really interesting and instructive details were involved. Well, the particulars of these crimes I wrote out at length, in my private shorthand, in a journal which I kept for the purpose—and which, I need not say, I locked up securely in my safe when I was not using it. After completing each case, it was my custom to change sides and play the game over again from the opposite side ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... settle back in your cushion seat to enjoy the trip. You marvel how he, standing at the stern, with his single oar fitted into a shallow notch of his steering post, propels the craft so swiftly and guides it so surely by those short, twisting strokes of his. Really, you reflect, it is rowing by shorthand. You are feasting your eyes on the wonderful color effects and the groupings that so enthuse the artist, and which he generally manages to botch and boggle when he seeks to commit them to canvas; and betweenwhiles you are wondering why all the despondent cats in Venice ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... Northland. Whenever an Indian band camps, it blazes a tree and leaves, as record for those who may follow, a message written in the phonetic character. I do not understand exactly the philosophy of it, but I gather that each sound has a symbol of its own, like shorthand, and that therefore even totally different languages—such as Ojibway, the Wood Cree, or the Hudson Bay Eskimos—may all be written in the same character. It was invented nearly a hundred years ago by a priest. ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... comment, and apparently did not even arouse the attention of vigilant Scotland Yard. Nor, had the colonel's speech been taken down by a shorthand writer and submitted to the police, could any suggestion be found of the significance of the meeting. He spoke of the difficulties of trading, of the "competition" with which the company was faced, and called upon all the shareholders to assist loyally the ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... and Shorthand Clerk.—Required at once for invoicing a young lady, accustomed to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various

... I knew shorthand," grumbled Ingred, comparing scribbles with Verity as the girls tidied their hair for tea. "How anybody's expected to get down all Miss Strong tells us, ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... become a journalist, and has to keep up an air of high spirits through a daily struggle with his own illiteracy and the precariousness of his employment. He has a note-book, and occasionally attempts to make a note; but as he cannot write shorthand, and does not write with ease in any hand, he generally gives it up as a bad job before he succeeds in finishing ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw

... a file, which had been thrown down the central light-well at him a few days before. The invention of the pocket recorder, which put a half-hour's conversation on a half-inch disk, had done more to slow down business and promote inane correspondence than anything since the earlier inventions of shorthand, typewriters and pretty stenographers. Finally, he cleared the machine, dumping the whole mess into a basket and carrying ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... recognised but which really depends on the same inherent necessity to preserve in a consistent form the expression of the radical vocables of Speech. Finally, in the hands of the expert stenographer the system of phonetic shorthand (though he still uses the sound as the guide and indicator of his actions) is as far removed from a pure phonetic representation as the ordinary method of spelling. Indeed, unless some such suprasensible and unifying principle were available, phonetic ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... business, and generally speaking points to the achievements of Germany for our envious imitation; it proclaims the commercial utility of Spanish and Russian, and ranges in its advocacy from advanced chemistry to shorthand and book-keeping. Much that writers on these lines have to urge against the present system is perfectly sound and reasonable. Many of their claims will have to be recognised in the educational system of the ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell

... took that as a lesson in the shorthand class of the Commercial Department last spring,' said Tubby, 'and some of the real good ones could do Gray's Elegy, from dictation, in seven minutes. See what Gray would have saved if ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... declared another of the gang, an effective youth, covered with silk handkerchiefs and nickel plating. "That's shorthand. I see 'em do ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... Dickens began to study shorthand, in order to become a reporter. This was the beginning of his success. His reports were accurate and racy, even when they happened to be written in the pouring rain, in a shaking stagecoach, or by the light of a lantern. They were also promptly handed ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... your talk in shorthand and send it to them, but that wouldn't do the business. I want them to watch you sell, to study how you make your points, how you introduce yourself, how you get your man's attention, how you bring out his objections and meet them, how you lead up to the signing minute, and show ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... commemorate the virtues of our dead who died that day—" Here the Advocate Imperial tried to interrupt him so as to spoil his peroration, and the written version now printed in his speeches differs altogether in language from that which was taken down by the shorthand writers at the time, although the idea is exactly the same. The two counsel spoke together for some minutes, each trying to shout down the other, until Gambetta's tremendous roar had crushed his adversary, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... the piano work, the special teaching of elegant accomplishments seems just at present on the wane. And on the whole I think what one might call useful or catchpenny accomplishments are also passing their zenith—shorthand lessons, book-keeping lessons, and such-like impostures ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... to the propagation of phonetic reading, phonetic longhand, phonetic shorthand, and phonetic printing. No. 46. Saturday, 15 November ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... distressing subject. When my mother left me that little sum of money I took a bold step. I went to Bristol to learn everything I could that would help me out of school life. Shorthand, book-keeping, commercial correspondence—I had lessons in them all, and worked desperately for a year. It did me good; at the end of the year I was vastly improved in health, and felt myself worth something in the world. I got a place as cashier in a ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... were never repeated), but the state of his education may be inferred from the established fact that the headmaster had said that if he had stayed three months longer he would have gone into logarithms. Instead of going into logarithms, Henry went into shorthand. And shorthand, at that date, was a key to open all doors, a cure for every ill, and the finest thing in the world. Henry had a talent for shorthand; he took to it; he revelled in it; he dreamt it; he lived for it alone. He won a speed medal, the gold of which was as pure as the ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... train, eight hours' journey,—means up at seven, breakfast at eight. In train dictate letters to secretary, who takes down in shorthand. (I never yet found a secretary who could write in a train. I can write quite easily; the secret is to sit up, holding pad in hand, and let the body move with the oscillation of the train. To write on your knee or on ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... musical instrument. There are thousands of stenographers who did not take up that profession until they were twenty-five or thirty years of age. They were firm believers in the adage, "It is never too late to learn." 2. Munson's appears to be the most popular system of shorthand. 3. A ten or fifteen minutes' walk in the open air before taking breakfast will do no harm; but indulgence in other forms of exercise should be reserved for the middle of the day, if possible, or an hour ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... Astronomical Lectures to the people of Ipswich. I therefore arranged with great care the necessary apparatus, and lectured six evenings in a room (I forget its name—it might be Temperance Hall—high above St Matthew's Street), from Mar. 13th to the end of the week. A shorthand writer took them down: and these formed the 'Ipswich Lectures,' which were afterwards published by the Ipswich Museum (for whose benefit the lectures were given) and by myself, in several editions, and afterwards ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... her shorthand manuscript; he seemed to be dreamily living over in his mind those moments on Mount Terrible. Presently ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... issues. Yet these real issues, it appeared as we talked, were not theories. Ideas, he said, if emphasized, destroy art. Writers, he thought, in the future would give up pure fiction (serious writers, I suppose he meant). Poetry would be their shorthand; they would by intenser language cut short ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... afterwards a place was found for him in a solicitor's office. In the meantime, his father had obtained a position as reporter on the "Morning Herald," and Dickens, too, resolved to try his fortune in that direction. Teaching himself shorthand, and studying diligently at the British Museum, at the age of twenty-two he secured permanent employment on the staff of a London paper. "Barnaby Rudge," the fifth of Dickens's novels, appeared serially in "Master Humphrey's Clock" during 1841. It thus followed "The Old Curiosity Shop," the character ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... quotidian, so 'tis his infirmity that makes him an author, as Mahomet was beholding to the falling sickness to vouch him a prophet. That nice artificer who filed a chain so thin and light that a flea could trail it (as if he had worked shorthand, and taught his tools to cypher), did but contrive an emblem for this skipjack and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... sharpest-brained—I don't say deepest-thinking—men I have ever come across. Hardly educated at all as a boy, he races through books (he read my Cary's Dante in a week), extracts the main gist of them, and is always learning some new thing, from shorthand to cooking, though he has no need to do much but behave himself for a pension. Almost harshly honest, he yet brings out with pride a large edition of Pope that he 'nicked' from the second-hand bookstall ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... and, moreover, he was known to be watching the case in the interests of the accused. Like myself, therefore, he was present as a spectator, but as a highly interested one, for he took very complete shorthand notes of the whole of the ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... number of men, the sales department is an excellent place from which to draw talking points. Interviewing salesmen as they come in from trips and so getting direct information, brings out talking points which are most helpful as are those secured by shorthand ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... of zealous archaeology notwithstanding, many phases of the so varied Greek genius are recorded for the modern student in a kind of shorthand only, or not at all. Even for Pausanias, visiting Greece before its direct part in affairs was quite played out, much had perished or grown dim—of its art, of the truth of its outward history, above all of its religion as a credible or practicable thing. And yet Pausanias ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... shorthand designation by which I have distinguished the first; REP. for Reporter designates the other. My wish and purpose is to extract all such variations of the text as seem to have any claim to preservation, or even, to a momentary consideration. But in justice to myself, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... The two have been through Yale, some of the war and much of the peace together, and the fact has inevitably developed a certain quality of being able to talk to each other in shorthand. ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... own time, yet too often overlooked, is the marvellously rapid diffusion of parliamentary news throughout the country. Important debates are frequently protracted in the House of Commons into the early hours of the morning. The speeches are instantly reported by the shorthand writers in the gallery, who dog the lips of the speakers and commit their every word to paper. Thus seized in the fleet lines of stenography, the words and phrases are then transcribed into long-hand. Relays of messengers ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... the kindest thing you can think of?" asked Sally. "I do mean it. I've written to London and I've got the prospectus here of one of the schools for teaching shorthand and typewriting. For eight pounds they guarantee to make any one proficient in both—suitable to take a secretaryship. Doesn't matter how long you'll stay; they agree for that sum to make you proficient, and they also half promise ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... characteristic more than another which should distinguish pen methods it is Directness. The nature of the pen seems to mark as its peculiar function that of picking out the really vital features of a subject. Pen drawing has been aptly termed the "shorthand of Art;" the genius of the ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis

... Locke, once happening to be in the company of several great lords, renowned no less for their wit than for their breeding and political consistency, wickedly amused himself by taking down their conversation by some shorthand process of his own; and afterwards, when he read it over to them to see what they could make of it, they all burst out laughing. And, in truth, the tinsel jargon which circulates among the upper ranks in every country yields mighty little gold to the crucible when washed in the ashes of literature ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... Problems," edited by Mr Basil Williams. In general, my aim has been to aid in humanising the Irish Question. The interpretation of various aspects of it, here offered, is intended to be not exhaustive but provocative, a mere set of shorthand rubrics any one of which might have been expanded into a chapter. Addressing the English reader with complete candour, I have attempted to recommend to him that method of approach, that mental attitude which alone can divest him of his preconceptions, and put him in rapport with the true spirit ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... traces of similar lines above and below, but they were so rubbed as to be undecipherable; while, as to the above, fancy my chagrin and disappointment as I turned the paper over, then back, and scanned the crabbed shorthand-like characters over and over again, but only to grow more and more confused, for I could make no sense of it whatever. Even if the upper and lower lines had been plain, I am afraid that I should have been no wiser. Certainly I had gone through ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... successful manner in which he has launched the opening chapters of the new "Life of Lincoln." The remaining ones, running a whole year, will be awaited with keen interest. It is said that Miss Tarbell has found and obtained a shorthand report of his unpublished but famous speech delivered at Bloomington, May 29, 1856, before the first Republican State convention ever held in Illinois. This is a great find and a very important addition to his published speeches. Many of those who heard it have ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various

... the Chinaman whom he saved from death the day before sitting on his verandah in the expectation of being kept for the rest of his life that his rescuer has forced upon him. It was true that she was an excellent shorthand-typist, but she vexed the decent grey by her vividness. The sight of her through an open door, sitting at her typewriter in her blue linen overall, dispersed one's thoughts; it was as if a wireless found its waves jammed by another instrument. Often ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... Watson. "Your work in Banfield will look like kindergarten when you're here a week. And don't have any idle dreams about studying shorthand and typewriting at night; you'll kill yourself if you try it. It isn't possible where fellows work like they have to in a city bank. I imagine they'll shove you on the cash book, where I am now. If ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... "During the night many more civilians were shot, so many that we were able to count over 200. Women and children, with lamps in their hands, were compelled to witness the horrible sight. We afterwards ate our rice among the dead bodies. Sadly beautiful." He adds (in shorthand) "Captain Hermann ...
— Their Crimes • Various

... of utterance beyond many" said his brethren in Colchester at the time of his decease. He was listened to by many outside the Society of Friends and his sermons, together with the prayer at the end of every one of them, were "exactly taken in character," that is in shorthand "as they were delivered ... in the meeting houses of the ...
— A Short History of a Long Travel from Babylon to Bethel • Stephen Crisp

... opportunities these tones and colours of fashion and "quality," of passion and manners, give to the future novelist, whose treatment shall stand to them very much as they stand to the shorter and sometimes almost shorthand written tales ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... superintendent of the St. Louis branch of the Adams Express Company, was pacing anxiously up and down his private office. Fotheringham was relating his exciting experience, which a stenographer immediately took down in shorthand. At frequent intervals Mr. Damsel would ask a searching question, to which the messenger replied in a straightforward manner and without hesitation. It was a trying ordeal to him. Innocent as he was, his own testimony was against him. ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... medieval lyrics of Rukopis Kralodvorsky written at the end of the thirteenth century. Across the border in Poland the new University of Cracow began its career. In Munich, Franz Gabelsberger invented the first working system of shorthand, which, in a perfected form, is still in use in Germany. During this year common school education took an immense stride in Germany, after the establishment in Prussia of a distinct Ministry for Public Education. Unfortunately the government ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... for me. One day I proposed marriage to her, and what do you think she did? She took all that I said down in shorthand and brought it, nicely ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... for clearness of statement, and as a narrative was simply a statement of consecutive facts, he was consequently peculiarly qualified and equipped for dictation. This turned out to be true. For he had dictated two hours that morning to a shorthand writer, had never hesitated for words, had not repeated himself, and the manuscript when finished needed no revision. The two hours' work was an account of Appomattox—and this was such an extremely important feature that his book would necessarily have been severely lame ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... who was not then the great man that he had since become, had been much with him. Then they had often discussed together the objects of their ambition and future prospects; then Tom Towers was struggling hard to maintain himself, as a briefless barrister, by shorthand reporting for any of the papers that would engage him; then he had not dared to dream of writing leaders for The Jupiter, or canvassing the conduct of Cabinet ministers. Things had altered since that time: the briefless barrister was still briefless, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... but, indeed, the same may to some extent be said, and in various degrees, of nearly all the lectures which Coleridge ever delivered. With the exception of seven out of the fifteen of 1811, which were published in 1856 by Mr. Payne Collier from shorthand notes taken at the time, Coleridge's lectures scarcely exist for us otherwise than in the form of rough preparatory notes. A few longer pieces, such as the admirable observations in the second volume of the Literary Remains, on poetry, on the Greek drama, and ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... ordinary, constant, and absolutely indispensable act of recognising objects and actions, of spotting their qualities and twigging their meaning: an act necessarily tending to more and more abbreviation and rapidity and superficiality, to a sort of shorthand which reduces what has to be understood, and enables us to pass immediately to understanding something else; according to that law of ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... for calling in your amanuensis," said Grodman. "I intended to ask you to lend me his services. I suppose he can write shorthand." ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... shorthand prefer to make a stenographic report of the entire speech and rearrange and condense it in the office. This method is advisable only in the case of speeches of the greatest importance; it is too laborious for ordinary purposes, since ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde

... coloured almanack given away at Christmas by the local grocer; on the advertisement of Jones' soap, and thinks with discontent of Polly Perkins, who in a natural way is as pretty a girl as can be looked for in this imperfect world. Thus it is that woman has had to take to shorthand and typewriting. Modern woman is being ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome

... certainly recommend intending historians to lay in these three volumes as an epitome in a brilliant shorthand of the facts and moods of the war—packed with shrewd comment and happy strokes of irony.... As a literary and dramatic tour de force I should judge it to ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd

... was at Nice France was in the throes of the Dreyfus affair. Chekhov began studying the Dreyfus and Zola cases from shorthand notes, and becoming convinced of the innocence of both, wrote a heated letter to Suvorin, which led ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... at Michaelmas. But midsummer and Michaelmas passed, Christmas and Easter, too, and Arthur's salary showed no sign of rising. He daren't tell Aggie that he had been obliged to leave off reading Latin in the evenings, and was working feverishly at shorthand in order to increase his efficiency. His efficiency increased, ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair

... Mr. Figgis, whose pencil was poised over the paper. "Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered," he began quickly and clearly, pacing the floor with his hands behind him. Mr. Figgis scratched down a line of shorthand with as much emotion as if he had been told that the day was fine—the pose of his craft. "He and his wife and two secretaries have been for the past fortnight at the house called White Gables, at Marlstone, near Bishopsbridge. He bought it four years ago. He and Mrs. Manderson ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... it was the end of a long evening, he collected a fairly decent number of francs and presented them to the cocher with an eloquent speech, which it was a pity someone could not have taken down in shorthand for him to use in his next story. The cocher, the least concerned of the group, thanked us with a broad grin, drew up his broken cab close to the sidewalk, took the horse from the shaft, clambered on its back, rode as fast as he could go down the street, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... cleared her throat. He could hear her gulp. Her voice was very small, thin. "Sir," she began again. "I contacted E McGinnis. He said some things. He told me to tell you exactly what he said, word for word. I took it down in shorthand, so I could." ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... teacher. She was so solid, so sure of herself, so wrapped up in and satisfied with something which she called "education." She asked Desire where she had been educated. Desire did not seem to know. "Just anywhere," she said, "when father felt like it and had time. And I taught myself shorthand." ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... had to be sent to New York for simultaneous publication with the Baltimore papers. Now the address was not written out; it was to be delivered from notes only. From these notes, then, he delivered it in extenso to the reporter, who took it down in shorthand, and promised to let him have a copy to lecture from next morning. But the fair copy did not come till the last moment. To his horror he found this was written out upon "flimsy," from which it would be impossible to read properly. Again he turned it down on the desk and boldly trusted to memory. ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... Overcastle, while I was third in the office staff of Rawdon's pot-bank in Clayton. We had met first in the "Parliament" of the Young Men's Christian Association of Swathinglea; we had found we attended simultaneous classes in Overcastle, he in science and I in shorthand, and had started a practice of walking home together, and so our friendship came into being. (Swathinglea, Clayton, and Overcastle were contiguous towns, I should mention, in the great industrial area of the Midlands.) We had ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... the various aldermen outside of the most hardened characters were more or less terrified by the grilling contest. It could do no good to battle with this gallery or the crowd outside. Above them sat the mayor, before them reporters, ticking in shorthand every phrase and word. "I don't see what we can do," said Alderman Pinski to Alderman Hvranek, his neighbor. "It looks to me as if we might just ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... sitting at his table, his coat off, an unlighted cigarette in his mouth, an untasted cup of tea by his side. Two shorthand clerks sat opposite to him, a typist was hard at work a few yards away. Staunton called me over to him. His voice was hoarse and raspy, and there were drops of sweat upon ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... me the letter—and the packet—to which I refer. The packet consisted of four note-books, quite crowded throughout with those giddy shapes of Pitman's shorthand, whose ensemble so resembles startled swarms hovering in flighty poses on the wing. They were scribbled in pencil, with little distinction between thick and thin strokes, few vowels: so that their slow deciphering, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... indulgent.' I do not think that I ever ventured to lead to this singular subject again. But you may depend upon it, that what I have said is as distinctly reported as if it had been taken down at the moment in shorthand. I should not otherwise have imparted the phenomenon at ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... sir," Arnold promised. "You can rely entirely upon my discretion. You will perhaps tell Mr. Jarvis that I am to do my work in here. Fortunately, I know a little shorthand, so if you like I can take the letters down. It will make my presence seem ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... it is the secretary's time to begin talking. He consults him about the various letters upon which he needs his advice and makes notations in shorthand on them. He reports on the various calls that have come in and the house memoranda. A good secretary reads and digests these before turning them over to his employer, and in most cases gives the gist of the memorandum instead of the memorandum ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney

... apparently a man of intelligence. No man who combines these two things can fail of admiration of Hauptmann, Sudermann and their brothers of the pen. And then a mute who knew shorthand well enough to have such ready recourse to it, struck me as being unusual. They all know the digital sign language; but German and phonography classed him as one above the ordinary. This knowledge brought the ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... of bile, or that nature selects specific types, may both be equally unmeaning re-statements of facts; but when it is explained that the term natural selection, unlike that of "hepatic sensation," is used as a shorthand expression for a whole group of well-known natural causes—struggle, variation, survival, heredity,—then it becomes evidence of an almost childish want of thought to affirm that the expression is figurative and nothing more. The doctrine ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... hand Kennedy held a notebook. "My stenographer writes a very legible shorthand; at least I find it so—from long practice, I suppose. As I glance over her notes I find many facts which will interest you later—at the trial. But—ah, here at the ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... deliberations of the legislature. A speech made in the House of Commons at four in the morning is on thirty thousand tables before ten. A speech made on the Monday is read on the Wednesday by multitudes in Antrim and Aberdeenshire. The orator, by the help of the shorthand writer, has to a great extent superseded the pamphleteer. It was not so in the reign of Anne. The best speech could then produce no effect except on those who heard it. It was only by means of the press that the opinion ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... wrote, more ideas would come, more and more: and he would write and write, on his shirt cuffs, in the lining of his hat. Quickly though he wrote, yet his thoughts would leap ahead, and he had to use a sort of shorthand. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... didn't want to tell more lies than I could help; a married woman on strike can't tell the truth, you know. And I can't typewrite or do shorthand yet. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the Magistrate, he said: "Magistrate, I want you to get a shorthand writer to take down every word that I am going to say, because whatever I may do in future I can never commit a greater act of rebellion than I have already committed. I am going through to Maritz, where we will receive arms and ammunition, and from ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... clerical post in some of the offices. She took up shorthand and poked a typewriter and read books on system and efficiency, then gave them up ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... to leaven a number of dull and uninteresting harangues. It was not a very exciting entertainment. But there were "the boys," vociferous, intolerant, sometimes amusing, to enliven proceedings for Molly; while Desmond snatched up the salient features in shorthand and with pencil. Samuel Quirk was a keen politician, and he had transferred the scope of his energy from Collingwood to Grey Town. Unlike many men, he had not changed his politics with the change in his fortunes. He it was who had organised the opposition. At his word ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... He, however, did not give up his old hobby, and the two friends used every Sunday in summer time to sally forth some distance from town and spend the whole live-long day upon the downs and in the green lanes of Surrey. Both of them had to work hard during the week. Rutherford, who had learned shorthand when he was young, got employment upon a newspaper, and ultimately a seat in the gallery of the House of Commons. He never took to collecting insects like his companion, nor indeed to any scientific pursuits, but ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... started wholly dependent upon his own exertions for a livelihood at fourteen years of age. At fifteen he learned shorthand by evening study. At sixteen he attended to the correspondence and mail order department for his employer. At eighteen he was getting $8.00 a week in cash for his services, and many times that amount ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter

... everything! There's nothing it won't lead to! It's the key of the future. You'll see. Look at Dayson. He's taken it up, and now he's giving lessons in it. He's got a room over his aunt's. I can tell you he staggered me. He wrote in shorthand as fast as ever I could read to him, and then he read out what he'd written, without a single slip. I'm having one of my chaps taught. I'm paying for the lessons. I thought of learning myself—yes, really! ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... contradictions while they are being read is most desirable and worthy of cultivation. The student should be taught the wisdom of keeping his notes in a neat, legible, and easily available form. Shorthand methods should be discouraged. With a little tactful direction early in the year, the student may be led to form a most useful habit. The greater the proportion of intelligent note-taking that is done without compulsion, the better. No more notes should be required than the teacher can ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell

... on the table and her head on her hands and proceeded to study the epistle still more closely. Then she drew from her pocket a notebook and pencil and with infinite care made a copy of the entire letter, writing it in her book in shorthand. This accomplished, she replaced the letter in the rifle stock and hung the ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... passages of the spoken oration, e.g. in Pro Mur. 57 only the headings appear, 'De Postumi criminibus.' 'De Servi adulescentis': cf. Plin. Ep. i. 20, 7, 'ex his apparet illum permulta dixisse, cum ederet omisisse.' For the practice of reporting his speeches in shorthand cf. Ascon. in Mil. 'manet illa quoque excepta eius oratio' (his speech at Milo's trial). The only case in which Cicero appeared for the prosecution was that of Verres: the part of an accuser was generally distasteful to him; cf. De Off. ii. 50, ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... most hurried crayons, pen-and-ink sketches, and aquarelles Guys is ever interesting. He has a magnetic touch that arrests attention and atones for technical shortcomings. Abbreviation is his watchword; his drawings are a species of shorthand notations made at red-hot tempo, yet catching the soul of a situation. He repeats himself continually, but, as M. Grappe says, is never monotonous. In love with movement, with picturesque massing, and broad simple colour schemes, he naturally gravitated to battle-fields. In Europe society ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... characters. The latest Malay immigrants, who had been influenced by Indian culture, introduced a style of writing that is very queer. Three vowels were used,—a, e, and u. The consonants were represented by as many signs that look a good deal like our shorthand. Although there were three characters to represent the vowels when used alone, whenever a consonant would be pronounced with "a," only the sign of the consonant was used. In order to express a final consonant, or one ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... deeply regret missing, and that was Paget's farewell speech to us, when all agree that he spoke with real and deep feeling. One of our gunners took it down in shorthand, ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... with greater confidence on the formation of articulate sounds, as I many years ago gave considerable attention to this subject for the purpose of improving shorthand; at that time I contrived a wooden mouth with lips of soft leather, and with a valve over the back part of it for nostrils, both which could be quickly opened or closed by the pressure of the fingers, the vocality was given by a silk ribbon about an inch long and a quarter ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... He was the first instance in the Western world of the pure man of letters. Alongside of his strictly literary production, he occupied himself diligently with the technique of composition—grammar, spelling, pronunciation, metre, even an elementary system of shorthand. Four books of miscellaneous translations from popular Greek authors familiarised the reading public at Rome with several branches of general literature hitherto only known to scholars. Following the demand of the market, he translated ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail



Words linked to "Shorthand" :   stenography, handwriting, script, shorthand typist, hand, written



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