Is Shorthand the Route to Success in Science Or

CuPF*nteamments” EUGENE GARFIELD

INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION= 3S01 MARKET ST, PHILADELPHIA, PA 19104 !., ,,, Is Shorthand the Route to Success ?&<%. in Science or Anything Eise? w(...:x..: Pm 1. History ad Evohstim of gg:,$~,: ; Stessograpidc Languages

Number 1 January 7, 1985

Any experienced journalist can per- companies that now use ISl? products form a credible job of reporting on al- regularly were not hiring recent science most any subject you can name, but it is graduates—at least not those in New reasonable to expect that a writer wifl York City. perform better or feel more comfortable In desperation, I responded to a clas- with those subjects in which he or she sfled ad for a sales correspondent at has had some personal experience. My the LaSalle University Correspondence choice of tepics for Current Con tents” School. The basic requirement was typ- (CP ) is colored by the random events ing skill. By another “accident” I had of my life. In particular, the subject of learned typing in high school. Having shorthand systems is one I’ve wanted to failed a few courses in history and En- cover for a long time. My reasons are glish, I made up the missing credhs by quite vaned. As you will observe, short- taking a few “easy” subjects, namely, hand is not only a topic of major scientif- typing, mimeogmphing, office practice, ic and business sign~lcance. Its linguis- and bookkeeping. I used these skills to tic, h~toncal, sociological, and techno- great advantage in college and in busi- logical ramifications are fascinating. ness. Presumably, the two major aims of As an employee of the school, I not shorthand are to reduce redundancy and only learned their techniques of maif or- to convey as much information as possi- der and telephone sales but was allowed ble with the smallest amount of writing. to take courses offered to students These goals are certainly laudable, par- through ads in Popular Science and ticularly in this verbiage-ridden age of other magazines. One of the courses was the “information explosion.” In the fiist stenotypy. I had learned the basics by part of this essay, I’ll discuss the history the time I left that job to return to chem- and development of the major short- istry. A small consulting lab on the East hand systems, includlng stenotypy. The Side of New York, Evans Research & second part will deal with the impact of Development Corporation, needed a dictation machines, tape recorders, and chemistry technician to help with “re- other modem technologies on short- search” on shampoos, denture powders, hand in the workplace. and other projects. At Evans, I spent the My early interest in stenography was first week doing viscosity measure- accidental. When I graduated from Co- ments. But a few weeks after I arrived, lumbia University, New York, in 1949, another accident occurred. My boss with a major in chemistry, there was a asked me to take the minutes of a con- significant recession in the US. I tried in ference with a client. When I turned in vain to find a job as a chemist. Some of my typewritten notes an hour later he the large pharmaceutical and chemical was quite surprised. Although I had only

1 used some of the short forms I had who was pontificating about information learned in stenotypy, I was a rapid typist retrieval and chemical literature like a and remembered what I had missed. fundamentalist preacher. When I suggested they buy me a steno- After listening to his lecture and a few type machine, it was decided that it others, I realized that some people were would not be practical to push the ma- actuallypaid for doing the kind of work I chine around the lab. More important, loved. I asked him how I could get a job they felt that taking notes so conspicu- in thk field. That’s how I was converted ously in the presence of a client would be to information science. too disquieting. So I returned to doing ti- From that point on, my life changed, trations. One day, I felt the conse- and within a few months I was working quences of an overheated beaker of sul- at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, furic acid. As I was weighing some re- Maryland. Perry had introduced me not agents on the other side of the lab, the only to the world of punched cards but beaker exploded. Fortunately, it only also to the world of scientific documen- burned the back of my lab coat. So I tation.2 jumped at the opportunity presented by During those early years, I remember another chance event. how the experiences of Broadway pr~ My cousin, Sidney Bernhard, was tak- ducer Billy Rose impressed me.s He had ing his PhD at Columbia with Louis P. advised young men to become stenogra- Hammett. He needed a lab assistant. phers and secretaries in order to prepare Naturally, I seized the opportunity to re- themselves for corporate success. Being turn to Columbia. Hammett introduced secretary to the boss was the fastest way me not only to physical organic chemis- to learn all about a business. It was the try but also to the world of chemical lit- shorthand route to success. Since then I erature. I His personal library included a have often wondered why more young complete set of Chemica/ A bstracts, and men do not realize this. It is unfortunate he was also editor of a chemical book that society views secretarial work as series published by McGraw-Hill. somehow demeaning. It certainly lacks I soon found out that I was more inter- the machismo often associated with fac- ested in creating an index to the depart- tory tasks. However, computerization mental closetful of chemical compounds and automation in the factory and office than in the exhausting, often dangerous have changed all that. We’ve alf become job of preparing picrate compounds de information technologists of one kind or no vo in the lab. After my second or third another. explosion, Hammett tactfully suggested At the Johns Hopkins University that I should try another field. Welch Medical Library Indexing Proj- I decided to apply for a job as a secre- ect, I met many people from the Army tary to the director of research at the Medical Library, now the National Lk Ethyl Corporation, Detroit, Michigan. brary of Medicine. One of them was He wanted someone who could take tra- Robert Hayne.4 He was a remarkable ditional dictation, so I quickly enrolled typist and stenographer in addition to in a stenography course at a business being a classicist and linguist. When I school in downtown New York. I was became a consultant, I helped recruit thus exposed to real shorthand. Were it Hayne for Smith, Kline and French Labs not for yet another accident, I might ~SK&F). A short time later, Irv Sher have gone to Detroit as a chemical secre- came to SK&F. Sher was a biochemist, tary. but he had also studied Chinese in the ar- It was now 1951, I happened to attend my. And he had a special interest in my fmt American Chemical Society shorthand systems-even those for meeting. There I met James W. Perry, Udnese. We all shared an interest in

2 chemical and scientific nomenclature to save time as well as to keep written along with other facets of information communications secret from the lower science. Later on, Hayne and Sher came ranks and conquered peoples.7 (p. 13) In to work at 1S1 where we experimented the Roman senate, teams of shorthand with many systems involving the nomen- writers took turns transcribing the pro- clature-notation interface. So it is not ceedhgs, writing with metal styli on clay surprising that 1S1 was one of the first or- tablets. The system was taught in more ganizations to use a chemical shorthand than 400 schools, and many emperors system after we started Index Chemi- and statesmen became accomplished cus@ in 1960. shorthand writers. Leaders of the early Sher is now director of development Christian church also used shorthand. In and quality control here at 1S1. He has fact, the Catholic Church, which used maintained hk keen interest in short- Latin as its primary language, perpetuat- hand systems. He has even designed a ed TUO’S method for more than a thou- system of hk own—Sherhand. He notes sand years. However, with the fall of the that thousands of shorthand methods Roman Empire and the advent of the have been developed throughout hktory Dark Ages, the use of shorthand de- in most Ianguages.s The origins of short- creased, as did the level of literacy in hand, however, are somewhat unclear. general. Few references are made to John Robert Gregg, author of what is shorthand after the fifth century AD.6 perhaps the best-known shorthand (p. 13) method in the US, was also a shorthand It was not until the 16th century that a historian. Shorthand was used by the an- major shorthand system was devised in cient Egyptians and by the Hebrews in Britain. Unlike Tire’s cursive system, Old Testament times.b (p. 1) The Greeks these later methods were geometri- are also known to have used shorthand. cal—based on a geometric shape such as For example, Hans Glatte, in hk review a circle or ellipse. English physician and of world shorthand systems, notes that parson Timothy Bright published in 1588 the philosopher and historian Xenophon his C’hamcterie: An An of Short, Swift, used an ancient shorthand system to re- and Secret Wn”ting by Chamcter.8 cord the memoirs of Socrates.7 (p. 12) (p. 25) Bright dedicated hk system to It was the Remans, though, who first Queen Elizabeth.b (p. 16) Charactene made extensive use of shorthand. Mar- had 500 to 600 symbols, known in short- cus Tullius Tiro (b. 103 BC), a former hand as “arbitraries,” each of which was slave of the statesman Cicero, is credited assigned to a common word. Synonyms with inventing the fiist important short- or antonyms were expressed by attach- hand system.b (p. 9) Tko’s method for ing alphabetic symbols to the left or abbreviating words was based on the right, respectively, of these key words. capital letters of the Latin alphabet. For example, to write the word “ac- Marks known as “diacriticals’’—dots, quaintance,” one would use the symbol dashes, and other symbols—supple- for the word “friend,” and then add the mented the simplified Latin letters to de- top of the character for a on the left side. note different words. In addition, Tiro For “despair,” one would use the symbol devised a method of varying the inclina- for “hope” and add a don the right side tion of a consonant to indicate the vowel to indicate an antonym.G (p. 20) Bright’s that followed.b (p. 10) Tire’s method was system, although very important in cursive—that is, based on the same con- shorthand history, was obviously cum- tinuous motion as longhand writing. bersome and difficult to use. The Tironian system, with refine- In 1602, English clergyman John Wil- ments by later authors, flourished in lis published his system, called The Rome. It was used by the Roman army Art of Stenogmphie, or Short- Writing.a

3 (p. 26) Willis was the first to use the term ing Shelton’s system, Pepys recorded in “stenography” (from the Greek stenos, his diary hk observations of the Great meaning “narrow” or “little”) for short- Plague and the Great Fire of London.T hand. Willis used diacritical (dots, in (p. 19) Apparently confident of the se- this case) in a descending scale to ex- crecy of his shorthand, Pepys also in- press the omitted vowels. The place- cluded accounts of his own excessive be- ment of the dot indicated the vowel be- havior, includlng drunkenness, wife ing represented. 7 (p. 17) Willi’s system abuse, and bribe-taking. The diary was was phonetic, based on the sounds of discovered, deciphered, and published consonants, vowels, and diphthongs. in 1825, providing hlstonans with a key Another popular English system of the document from that period.b (p. 42) early 1600s was designed by Thomas Throughout the 17th and 18th cen- Shelton. Shelton’s method, Short Writ- turies, many authors invented and pub- ing, was heavily influenced by Willis’s lished their own systems of shorthand. It stenography. Shelton, however, im- was not uncommon for these authors to proved the Willis method by devising borrow rather heavily from their prede- signs for such frequently occurring di- cessors. Englishman William Mason, for graphs as ng, sh, and th.T (p. 19) example, whom one historian calfs “the The main impetus for the widespread most celebrated shorthand writer of the proliferation of shorthand systems came 17th century,”g (p. 29) publiihed his during the Reformation, the popular system in 1672, with subsequent refine- movement for religious reform that be- ments in later years. When another gan in the 16th century.s In thk time of Englishman, Thomas Gurney, published intensive religious activity and upheaval, his own system in 1750, it was basically the public was eager to capture the the 1707 edition of Mason’s system. words of the religious reformers of the Gurney’s method, bmchygmphy (from day. Shorthand systems arose to fill this the Greek bmchys, meaning “short”) need—to provide for the verbatim re- added a few alterations and improve- cording of the preachings and discourses ments, but was largely a wholesale ap on religious matters of great impor- propriation of Mason’s system.b (p. 60) tance.b (p. 39) By 1750, Gurney was already well on In add]tion to recording religious ora- his way to establishing a dynasty of offi- tory, people found other uses for short- cial shorthand reporters. He had se- hand. For example, public plays were mred the title of Official Shorthand Re- often taken down by shorthand writers porter to London’s Old Bailey Criminal in the audience. Some scholars even sug- Court in 1748. This is the fhst known gest that the inaccurate, “bad” quartos permanent appointment of an official of some of Shakespeare’s plays were the ;ourt stenographer.G (p. 60) After Gur- result of faulty transcriptions of short- ney’s death in 1770, hls son took over the hand notes. But other scholars have ?osition, and obtained an informal ap- argued that the only systems that could pointment as official stenographer to the have been used at the time, Bright’s or two Houses of Parliament in 1806. Seven Wiflis’s, were completely inadequate for years later, the appointment of the Gur- recording the richness and complexity of ney firm as exclusive reporters of Parlia- Shakespearean language.9 ment was made official. Shorthand was also used to make en- One famous student of the Gurney tries in personal diaries. One such exam- method was the novelist Charles Dick- ple is the shorthand diary of Samuel ms. Aspiring to a career in journalism, Pepys (1633-1703), the English scholar, :he young Dickens undertook to learn politician, and naval administrator. Us- :he Gurney system, and spent some 18

4 months in the pursuit. 10Later, he would Throughout the early history of short- write of hk difficulties in learning hand, the authors were generally men of the system: “The unaccountable conse- considerable intellect and erudition, and quences that resulted from marks like the systems they devised required a great fly’s legs; the tremendous effects of a deal of time and study to master.b (p. 66) curve in the wrong place-not only trou- As industrialization increased in the 19th bled my waking hours, but reappeared century, a new need arose for short- before me in my sleep.,..”l 1 (p. 25) But hand—in the office. With businesses Dickens became an able shorthand growing larger and more complex, there writer, and was hked as a parliamentary was a rise in the volume of record-keep- reporter for the London True Sun in ing, correspondence, and other paper- 1832. His daily work, reporting and work, and a subsequent expansion in the transcribing parliamentary proceedings, clerical work force. [z Stenographers provided him with plenty of material for who could quickly perform dictation his later novels, especially an abiding and transcription duties were a central disdain for politicians. Despite the diffi- part of this expansion. To fill the grow- culty of the work, Dickens later in life ing need for office stenographers, short- would speak fondly of his days as a hand inventors set out to create systems “faithful stenographer.” 10 that would be easier to learn and more Another influential British system was accessible to those who were not exten- invented by John Byrom and published sively educated. in 1767. Bryom’s method was geometri- Samuel Taylor, an Englishman, had cal, and his alphabet was based on the noted the complexity of previous short- various segments of a circle. Vowels hand systems. Basing hk work on were expressed as dots placed in any of Byrom’s system, he attempted to devise five positions around the characters. a method that would employ better, Each position, of course, denoted a dif- more distinct characters with fewer arbi- ferent sound. Byrom was also the first to trages than previous methods. Taylor devise consonant characters on the basis reduced to 20 the number of sounds for of their affinity of sound, taking into ac- which characters would be provided.s count the similarity in such sounds asp, (p. 35) His system, published in 1786, b, and v.b(p. 81) was called the Universal System of S:e- Popular systems were also being creat- nogmphy or Short Hand Writing. This ed outside the UK in Europe. For exam- method particularly influenced short- ple, Franz Gabelsberger, a German, hand authors in continental Europe.T published a cursive system in 1834 that (p. 24) dispensed with diacritical in favor of In England, Taylor’s system influ- more fluid writing. His system was very enced a teacher named Isaac Pitman, popular in Germany and spread to Rus- who had a particular interest in spelling sia and Scandinavia in the mid-19th cen- reform. Pitman favored the abandon- tury. Other popular systems, some based ment of traditional spelling in favor of on the work of Byrom and his followers, phonetic spelling. 13 In 1837, Pitman were also being invented in France. published his Stenographic Sound Shorthand had also found its way to Hand, which was later called, “phonog- America. Such prominent Americans as raphy,” and then simply “Pitman’s short- Increase Mather, Benjamin Franklin, hand.”b (p. 85) Pitman used shading, the and Thomas Jefferson used shorthand. technique of expressing similar-sound- The skill was also prized by the early ing consonants by varying the thickness presidents of Harvard University.b of the written stroke. For example, the (p. 45) Pitman method expresses the p sound, a

5 whkpered consonant, as a single diag~ Ffgure I: Example of the bssic Pitman shorthand nal stroke. The b sound is depicted by alphabet. the same symbol, only the stroke is PITMAN shorthand drawn thicker. The heavier stroke corresponds to the “thicker,” voiced sound of the b.7 (p. 34) To express vowels, Pitman Derived from cir&-- used diacritical dots in 16 variations has no mmplete alphabet.

around the consonants, written at the Alphabet beginning, middle, or end of the stroke. (Consonants only) Pitman also used positioning, which meant that characters expressed differ- ..\. .) I L..._..<. ent meanings depending upon whether B C,S D F C H they were written above, on, or through the ruled line. ../. __... /’- By 1880, the Pitman system was pre- ...-w\ ... JK,C,QLhi NP dominant in Great Britain-not only for court reporting and personal use, but for the growing numbers of clerical workers ..>. \. u.<<) learning shorthand for use in office jobs. RT.VWYZ About 140,000 students a year were be- Vowel indication ginning to study the Pitman system.b ( diacritical) (p. 86) Figure 1 shows the basic Pitman alphabet. But other authors continued to devel- J. .:1.J.... [...1”.1!. at et it ta te ti op systems of their own. One such author was John Robert Gregg, born in Ire- etc. land in 1867. As a child, Gregg had Reprinted with permission from Philosophical Library, taken up the study of the Pitman meth- nc.1 od, but had found it too complex to master. 14(p. 32) After moving with his fami- diacritical symbols. In sum, Gregg’s cur- ly to Scotland at the age of 11, Gregg sive system was based on the curvilinear began to study other systems. Fascinat- motion of writing in longhand—the ed with the theories and principles of easy, continuous flow along the line in shorthand methods, Gregg soon began one thickness. 14(p. 67) The basic Gregg to tinker with a system of his own. He alphabet is shown in Figure 2. worked as a clerk in a one-man law of- Gregg published his system, Light- fice. Since his employer was frequently Line Phonogmphy, in 1888. He had absent, Gregg had plenty of time to de- moved to L~verpool, England, by that vise his own shorthand system. time, and he began looking for students. Gregg sought to develop a method The well-entrenched Pitman organiza- that would incorporate the simplicity of tion provided formidable competition, longhand writing and avoid the awkward md it mounted an extensive advertising shading, positioning, and “obtuse an- ;ampaign to quash Gregg’s new system. gles” of the Pitman system. l’f (p. 38) He A widely circulated Pitman poster fea- formed his alphabet by assigning the tured a large black circle with a small most easily drawn characters to the most white wedge cut into it. The black part, frequently occurring sounds. He also :laimed Pitman, represented the writers sought to express vowels more naturalfy >f Pitman shorthand, while the small by connecting them with the consonant white slice represented writers of all characters, rather than using disjoined >ther systems combined. Gregg, whose

6 Figure 2: Example of the basic Gregg shorthand later, Andrew’s partner, Oliver Dyer, alphabet. settled in Philadelphia and established GREGG Shorthand the first American periodical devoted to shorthand, the A men”can Phonogmphic Derived from wal- Journal. He also began the first experi- has no complete alphabet. mental high school classes in shorthand Alphabet @ at Philadelphia’s Central High School. IS (Consonants only) Through the 1860s and 1870s, as more states enacted laws establishing appoint- ments for official court reporters, the ...... (...... ( ...... A...... m .... Pitman system gained prominence. B C,S D F G In Boston, Gregg set up his first school in an office he shared with a num- ...... 34...... [..cx. ber of shady businesses, including HJKLM crooked realtors. Gregg also taught his method at the Boys’ Institute of Indus- ....-..., C. . .. W. . .. A. .... L.... try, a Boston vocational school. In 1898, NPRTV after moving to Chicago, Gregg ac- quired enough capital to publish a book Vowel indication on his system. “By 1900, ” as Gregg (Ovals, hooks, wrote, “it began to sweep all over the diacritical ) country. ”ld (p. 57) ...... /00.....$l...... y....fl...... In 1910, Pitman’s system was still the aeiou most widely taught in the US, but Gregg etc. was making inroads. For one thing, his

(Reprinted with permission from Philosophical Librsry, method was easier to learn than Inc. ) Pitman’s. So it was better suited to fill the fast-growing need for office stenog- pamphlets advertised his “Shorthand for raphers. The Pitman method, on the the Million,” parodied thk approach. other hand, was almost exclusively ass~ The large black field in his poster repre- ciated with court reporting. Gregg con- sented those multitudes who had begun stantly improved and refined hk system, the study of Pitman, while the tiny white while Pitman’s American followers wedge stood for those few who were able failed to do the same for theirs. By 1919, to make the slightest practical use of it 80 percent of shorthand students in the after years of tedious study.G (p. 86) US were learning Gregg’s system.ls Despite his hard work, Gregg found Around 1906, an American named himself struggling for students and bare- Ward Stone Ireland invented the steno- ly able to make a living. In 1893, he left type machine for court reporting. Con- England for America. sequently, the Pitman system began to Unfortunately, when Gregg arrived in lose its implicit monopoly on courtroom Boston he found that the Pitman system stenography. The stenotype machkte, had preceded him. As Roger B. Lan- resembling a small combination type- droth, Department of Education, Ba- writer-adding machine, uses combina- ruch College, New York, points out, an tions of conventional capital letters American named Stephen Pearl An- rather than obscure symbols. Usually, drews had brought the Pitman material these combinations will signify different back from a trip to England in 1842. An- consonant sounds. “TP,” for example, is drews set up a headquarters for the Pit- used for the initial f sound, so that in man system in Boston. 15 Seven years stenotypy “TPAT” would denote the

7 word “fat. ” The stenotype machine, in were designed for students, j oumalists, the hands of a skilled operator, could or anyone who needs to take detailed record proceedings much more quickly notes on spoken or written material. Un- and efficiently than could a manual like the more complex systems, which shorthand writer. In part two of thk substitute abstract characters for consc- essay, I’ll discuss stenotypy in greater nant and vowel sounds, the simpler detail. methods retain the normal alphabet and By 1930, the Pitman method was usually omit silent letters and internal taught exclusively in only 5 of the 100 vowels, not unlike written forms of He- major US cities. Today the Gregg sys- brew and other languages. A.B. C. tem is the most widely taught in the US, Shorthand, designed in 1933 by William while the Pitman method is still popular A. Brooks, replaces commonly used in the UK and wherever else the English words with contractions: “easy” be- language predominates. s comes ez, and “cannot” shrinks to knt. ‘As I mentioned at the start of this es- The system also presents rules for abbre- say, the show-business impresario Billy viation, such as switching a capital v for Rose was a great believer in the value of the suffixes “ive,” “sive,” and “tive. ” A shorthand skills. Before he became the comma denotes the suffix “ing,” while a producer of such extravaganzas as the large plus sign denotes suffixes with the “Aquacade,” and before his celebrated “end” or “ant” sound. The author claims marriage to comedienne Fanny Brice, his system can be mastered in 12 hours. 17 young William Rosenberg had mastered A similar system is Note.script, by Gregg shorthand. ltI He won the high- Lawrence F. Hawkins, which, like school speed championship in his native A, B. C. Shor/hand, omits internal vow- New York City at the age of 16 and went els and silent letters and presents con- on to become the interscholastic cham- tractions and symbols for commonly pion of New York state. He had broken used words. For example, in Notescript his writing hand on the eve of the state the t is drawn as an uncrossed vertical competition but managed to win any- line with a small stem at the base. The way, clutching in his swollen fist a potato word “that” becomes a shape resembling through which he’d stuck a pen. lb A few a capital u. An apostrophe-like slash, years later, Rose won the world cham- combined with the proper letter, can pionship. During World War I, he was substitute for a common prefix, such as hired as personal stenographer to Ber- “hyper,” “para,” or “every.”ls Obvious- nard Baruch, the financier and presiden- ly, the writer must depend on memory tial adviser who was then serving as and context in deciphering notes and chairman of the War Industries Board. should transcribe notes at the first op- Shortly afterward, Rose gave up short- portunity. Other, similar systems in- hand reporting to embark on the show- clude Briefhand, 19 Forkner Alphabetic business career that would bring him Shorthand,20 and Hy-Speed Long- success and celebrity. I vividly remem- hand.zl Alf these methods, while not ber attending the “Aquacade” he creat- suited for sustained verbatim recording, ed at the Worlds Fair in New York in do provide for quicker, more efficient 1939. note-taking. Of course, not all 20th century short- Not afl shorthand systems have been hand systems were designed for court re- designed solely for use with words. porting or office stenography. Other, Others have been developed for mathe- simpler systems have been devised that matics and other disciplines in science do not require a great deal of time or in- and technology. Exponential notation, tensive study to master. These methods for example, is a form of shorthand.

8 Originally devised by the French mathe- niscent of the science of signage, which I matician RenE Descartes in the 17th cen- considered in a previous essay.zs tury, exponential notation is a means of Other systems have been developed expressing very large or very small num- for use by chemists. One method, de- bers as powers of 10. Also, because signed by Evan Baltazzi, Evanel Asso- names for numbers above a million signi- ciates, NortMleld, Ohio, presents a sim- fy different values in different countries, pliiled method of expressing chemical exponential notation helps prevent am- procedures. Graphic symbols represent biguity when results are published inter- most of the apparatus and operations so nationally .12 that the procedure, in shorthand form, On the other hand, one must be wary resembles an extended equation. There of confusing mathematical notation with are signs for beakers, flasks, condensers, more conventional forms of shorthand. and so on. Other symbols, such as a In his book, The Development of Math- small triangle meaning “heat” and a ematics, E.T. Bell, California Institute small “x” meaning “crystallize,” describe of Technology, Pasadena, refers to the each procedure in detail.zb statement “mathematics is a shorthand” Perhaps one of the best-known chemi- as a “quarter-t ruth.”zs In a shorthand cal shorthand systems is Wiswesser Line system such as Gregg, each line and Notation (WLN). Introduced in 1950 by curve corresponds to a spoken sound. In the chemist WiKlam J. Wiswesser, US mathematical notation, however, the Department of Agriculture, Frederick, signs and symbols may not have any Maryland, the system provides a com- precise verbal origin, or the origin may pact, unambiguous method for repre- have been lost over time. Mathematical senting the structure of a chemical mole- notation operates at a more symbolic, cule.27 WLN uses the 10 numerals, 26 abstract level. capital letters of the alphabet, the blank Another system of scientific short- space, and a few punctuation marks. In hand is the Symbolic Shorthand System most cases, WLN atomic symbols corre- (SSS) for physiology and medicine. De- spond to those with which the chemist is vised by the late Hans Selye, famous for familiar. When WLN symbols—each de- the general adaptation syndrome, and noting a particular structural frag- George Ember, University of Montreal, ment—are combined in a precise linear SSS is a system of mnemonic symbols sequence, the result is a unique and un- and signs that the authors used to cata- ambiguous structural formula.zs Aspi- log their research on stress and end~ rin, for example, is represented as QVR crinology. The authors note, however, BOV1. Since all WLN symbols can be that the system is perfectly adaptable to found on typewriter and computer key- other areas of medicine.zd In SSS, the boards, the system has become an in- symbols and abbreviations are reminis- valuable tool for online indexing and recent of the subjects they denote. For ex- trieval of inf ormation on chemical com- ample, “Cr” stands for “cardiac,” “R’ for pounds. 1S1 has made extensive, pim “renal, “ “Hep” for “hepatic,” “Tr” for neering use of WLN. Whh Index Chemi- “thyroid,” and so on. SSS can also ex- cus Online, for example, WLN can be press diseases and other medical condi- used to perform many types of substruc- tions. One of the SSS’s general symbols ture or parent compound searches. Ac- is an upward-pointing arrow, which de- cording to Wendy A. Warr, ICI Ltd., notes an increase. Therefore, combining Macclesfield, England, WLN is taught “Tr” with this arrow expresses the condi- and used widely, and has been adapted tion “hyperthyroidism. ”14 This combina- to French, German, and even Japa- tion of characters and graphics is remi- nese.Ig After the development of the

9 DARC system by I.E. Dubois, CNRS, technological advances. In the next part Paris, programs were developed that of this essay, I’ll discuss technology’s im- permit WLN notations to be converted pact on shorthand, including that of tape to structural diagrams.~ recorders and dictation machmes, and Considering the stress placed on lec- the possible impact of voice-recognition tures in high school and college, it is systems in the future. ironic that we do not teach students shorthand so that they can take proper notes. This is a skill that will serve them ***** as much as typing and computer pro- gramming. If nothing else, shorthand teaches you to listen. My thanks to Christopher King and Not all shorthand systems have been Amy Stone for their help in the prepara- able to adapt and survive in the face of tion of this essay. @1S95 ISI

REFERENCES

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