Why Modern Courts and Newsrooms Still Refuse to Kill Traditional Shorthand

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The shorthand systems running through modern newsrooms and legislative galleries evolved through distinct historical philosophies. The oldest modern heavyweight, Pitman shorthand, developed by Sir Isaac Pitman in 1837, is an intensely precise phonetic system. It relies on stroke thickness and positioning relative to ruled notebook lines to denote vowel sounds and consonant pairings. While Pitman enables extraordinary transcription speed wpm, often pushing past 140 wpm, it requires precise fountain pen control and extensive manual practice, making it difficult to maintain under battlefield or street-reporting conditions.

The Gregg shorthand system, invented by John Robert Gregg in 1888, discarded Pitman’s thick-and-thin line variations in favor of curvilinear motion based on natural cursive hand flow. Gregg became the administrative backbone of twentieth-century American business and legal offices. Its fluid, elliptical strokes allow writers to hit speeds above 160 wpm with standard ballpoint pens, though deciphering an archive of Gregg notes requires deep familiarity with system-specific brief forms.

Teeline shorthand arrived in 1968, engineered by James Hill specifically to bypass the steep learning curve of phonetic systems. Rather than building from abstract phonetic strokes, Teeline streamlines the standard alphabet by stripping vowels and non-essential consonant tails. Because of its practical design, Teeline became the undisputed universal standard for media training, allowing journalists to achieve professional speed in months rather than years.