The devil’s handwriting
The devil’s handwriting
This chapter provides a technical analysis of Brachygraphy, with a focus on the writing of shorthand. It begins with a description of Gurney’s symbols and arbitrary characters (section 2.1), drawing on Dickens’s teaching notebooks to highlight the complex memorization process involved (section 2.2). Section 2.3 explores Gurney’s bizarre rules for abbreviation and vowel reduction during the writing process, while section 2.4 describes the mental processes involved in taking down verbatim speech in Gurney shorthand and shows how, by comparison with the more economical Pitman system, the mental processing involved in writing Gurney shorthand was much more demanding on its users. Section 2.5 examines Dickens’s distinctive shorthand writing style by comparing it with that of his novice pupil Arthur Stone, while section 2.6 shows how Dickens used creative shortcuts and graphic alterations to change the Gurney system to one that was easier both to write and to teach.
Keywords: Arthur Stone, Pitman, arbitrary characters, writing, memorization, abbreviation, vowels
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
