from Hacker News

Orthic Shorthand – Write as fast as you type

by saint11 on 1/19/24, 3:48 AM with 74 comments

• by heads on 1/19/24, 6:07 AM

  Looking at images of shorthand makes me remember how much I just enjoyed playing the 2023 game Chants of Sennaar: https://www.rundisc.io/chants-of-sennaar/

  The game’s dialogue and story are all written in a series of ever more complex writing systems, unseen and novel to the game. There’s a mechanic where you get to prove to the game you understand what is being written or said (characters have subtitles also in the writing systems) and it’s really good fun!

  Pittman shorthand: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6Wr53ouD4Ok/WhxIZR6AOZI/AAAAAAABI...

  Sennaarian writing: https://cdn.focus-home.com/fhi-fastforward-admin/resources/g...

• by sam_goody on 1/19/24, 8:06 AM

  I learnt Pittman shorthand (and some Greg), and taught it to my kids as a "secret code". They use it in class to jot notes the teacher cannot read :)

  Both of these make the writing faster, but reading slower. I once spoke the world's champion shorthand writer - I've forgotten her name. She said the even she cannot read shorthand as fast as regular text.

  Which made sense before computers, when a stenographer needs to write very quickly, and English is written long.

  Bt, nowadays we need the opposite - a "shorthand" which, once you have learned, can be consumed quickly. I know from experience that it takes much less time to read Hebrew than to read the same text in English (even though my mother tongue is English), since the vowels are assumed and abbreviations are extremely common - the actual text is shorter and quicker to read.

  I can scan a long article quickly, but I wish there was a way to convert that to a writing system that was quicker to intake.

• by 1f60c on 1/19/24, 9:47 AM

  See also:

  Shavian alphabet https://www.shavian.info/alphabet/

  Which has similar goals

• by csa on 1/19/24, 8:11 AM

  I can’t even read my own cursive, so I can’t imagine how illegible my shorthand cursive would be.

  Does anyone have any experience with this that suggests that maybe it can be clearer than cursive?

  One can always hope…

• by riffraff on 1/19/24, 7:25 AM

  My mom went to a professional school for "company secretary" or something like that in the 70s and learned shorthand notation (and typing). I recall trying to learn from her books as a kid, it's not that hard.

  But she never seemed to actually use it later in her life (she still touch typed tho!).

  I wonder how useful shorthand is in these days when cheap recording devices are available in everyone's pocket.

  Maybe people who keep hand written diaries still use it?

• by patch_collector on 1/19/24, 1:58 PM

  Is anyone aware of any good iPad apps for writing notes in shorthand, then converting to text? I currently use an app called Nebo to write notes and journal entries, then convert them to text before uploading into other systems. It works well, and I really appreciate being able to get away from a keyboard, but I'm a much slower writer than typist.

• by gumby on 1/19/24, 4:59 PM

  I like the idea of a faster handwriting script. I've actually found the old Graffiti script pretty good (fast and clear) for writing notes. I remember I used to see it on whiteboards when MBAs were writing -- probably showing off. Unfortunately if I write on my ipad (my main use of it) the OS does a pretty good job of OCRing it so I can search my notes. The same thing isn't possible with anything abnormal like Graffiti.

  Classic shorthand has never worked for me as it records the sound rather than the semantics. This is reasonable as a way to time delay dictation (when you read the shorthand you hear the sound in your head, so you type as if you were hearing the person speaking in realtime). But when I read I don't hear any sounds, so this would be like listening to the person speak, which defeats all the advantages of reading.

• by kfarr on 1/19/24, 7:24 AM

  This looks like a super hard version of the old school palm pilot shorthand.

• by sieste on 1/19/24, 10:28 AM

  Trading off writing speed for legibility seems wrong to me. Writing fast is a skill that can be learned by regular practice. If you spend half the time to learn an illegible code like orthic on simply practicing your usual handwriting you'll end up writing quite a bit faster while increasing legibility. I would try that first.

• by drewcsillag on 1/19/24, 7:32 PM

  One of the things I like about Gregg is that similar sounds p/b f/v t/d have similar shapes so when reading, if it’s ambiguously or wrongly written, by pronouncing what’s there, I can figure out which one was meant. Also, since Gregg is phonetic, I don’t have to worry about how to spell either.

  Orthic has some of that, but not to the extent of Gregg.

• by Roark66 on 1/19/24, 9:42 AM

  The best shorthand for onscreen writing is the way SwiftKey keyboard supports. Basically you swipe your finger in one continuous path between letters stopping between words. It let's one write in comparable speed to typing on a smartphone onscreen keyboard.

• by dartharva on 1/19/24, 5:53 PM

  Inventing an entire writing script was not what I expected "shorthand" to mean.

• by maksimur on 1/19/24, 9:27 AM

  They kind of resemble Arabic writing. Especially the words "adder", "fed", "hit" or "city".

• by Sakos on 1/19/24, 11:29 AM

  Honestly, I'm more interested in keyboards that use vowels or other combinations to write over something like this. It's interesting, but I never need to write anything anyway. But the ability to type much faster would be helpful in certain situations.

• by TurboHaskal on 1/19/24, 8:46 AM

  Ah, finally I will be able to understand my doctor's handwriting.