Stenoscript: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 15:56, 17 November 2015

Revision as of 22:21, 18 March 2017

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'''Stenoscript''' or ''Stenoscript ABC Shorthand'' is a [[shorthand]] system invented by Manuel C. Avancena (1923-1987) and first published in 1950. EncyclopediaEncyclopædia Britannica, perhaps erroneously, claims the system was originally published in London in 1607.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/565305/Stenoscript-ABC-Shorthand|title=Stenoscript ABC Shorthand|work=EncyclopediaEncyclopædia 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, 8 April 1968), Avencena 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.

According to a profile published in ''The News'' (the daily newspaper in Frederick, Maryland, 8 April 1968), Avencena 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>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 and special symbols. 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 vowels 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>M. Avencena, Stenoscript ABC Shorthand, 1967 revised edition.</ref>

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==Commentary==

{{SectionOriginal ORresearch section|date=November 2014}}

The system was intended to be a standardised form of abbreviation, requiring great mastery of recall. For example, ak stands for "acknowledge".

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==References==

{{Reflist}}

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[[Category:Shorthand systems]]