Stenoscript: Difference between revisions

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{{Short description|1950 Writing System}}

'''Stenoscript''' or ''Stenoscript ABC Shorthand'' is a [[shorthand]] system invented by Manuel C.Claude Avancena (1923–1987)<ref>[https://de.findagrave.com/memorial/49003273/manuel-claude-avancena Avancena's biography]</ref> and first published in 1950. ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'', perhaps erroneously, claims the systemit was originallybased on a system published in London in 1607.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/565305/Stenoscript-ABC-Shorthand|title=Stenoscript ABC Shorthand|work=Encyclopædia Britannica|accessdate=2014-11-14}}</ref> An unrelated project also called Stenoscript was written by George A.S. Oliver and published in London in 1934.<ref name="auto">Information retrieved from worldcat.org 2014-11-14</ref>

==History==

According to a profile published in ''The News'' (the daily newspaper in Frederick, Maryland, April 8, 1968), AvencenaAvancena was attending law school at [[George Washington University]] in the late 1940s. He objected to the steep [[learning curve]] of [[Gregg shorthand]] and dropped the shorthand class in order to devote his free time to developing a system that could be learned more quickly. After spending many hours in the [[Library of Congress]] studying stenography and word frequency statistics, he eventually self-published his first Stenoscript book and taught classes to promote his system.

Numerous revised editions of the Stenoscript manual were published through 1989. A Spanish edition was published in 1967, a book of dictation drills appeared in 1972 and Stenoscript dictionary was issued in 1989.<ref name="auto"/> The system was taught in some American high schools and colleges although it is difficult to determine how many. A few academic dissertations and theses compared the progress of Stenoscript students to learners of other systems.<ref name=comp>examples: ''The use of Forkner and Stenoscript ABC shorthand by selected Kansas high school graduates,'' Joanne R. Brookshier, Emporia State University, 1977; and ''An experimental study to compare productivity of Stenoscript ABC shorthand with Gregg shorthand,'' Janet Rae Weber, University of Colorado, 1968.</ref>

==Writing==

Stenoscript is written using traditional longhand [[cursive]] characters with a few variations (t's are not crossed, i's and specialj's symbolsare not dotted, m's and w's are written as a single long curve, and 'F' is written like a crossed '7') and a few punctuation marks (dash, slash, comma) used as letters. Lower-case letters are used for phonetically spelling words. Upper-case letters have special meanings,: for example, ''F'' represents the suffix "''-ful"'' or "''-fully"'' and ''S'' represents the letter-pair '''st'''. Unless they are silent, vowels are written when they occur at the beginning or end of a word, but vowelsmonophthongs within words are omitted: "bank" becomes ''bq.'' (The letter 'q' represents the ''-nk'' sound.) Instead of writing -ed or -d at the end of a word, Stenoscript indicates the past tense of a verb by underlining the final letter of the stem.<ref name=ABC>M. AvencenaAvancena, Stenoscript ABC Shorthand, 1967 revised edition.</ref>

The author claimed that a student of his system could "attain a speed of 80 words a minute with comparatively little effort" and that speeds of 100 to 120 words per minute could be reached after intensive study and drilling.

==Commentary==

The system is a standardised form of abbreviation. For example, ''ak'' stands for "acknowledge" and all its derivations. Although it is generally slower to write in than more abbreviated forms of shorthand such as [[Gregg shorthand|Gregg]] and [[Pitman shorthand|Pitman]],<ref name=comp/> it remains closer to alphabetic orthography. For example,

:I ak _&mdash; k_k&mdash; k_k&mdash;

:"I acknowledge the client's comment"<ref name=ABC/>