[planet-and-halo]

I read a tiny bit about shorthand and invented my own using some of the principles other systems were designed on during a long weekend. Great investment, lots of fun. I specifically designed notation that could be common across digital and handwritten, and that paid off big.

[jodrellblank]

Have you written anything about that (in longhand!) - what was in the design for digital/handwriting crossover?

[planet-and-halo]

I haven't written about it before, but happy to share.

The way I made the crossover work is that normal text was all lower case alphanumeric. This is similar to Teeline shorthand, from which I borrowed ideas heavily. Because all symbols were alphanumeric, it could work in either medium.

The next step was to figure out how to make this effective in handwriting. Typing letters is easy, but writing them varies in difficulty/time. Again I borrowed from Teeline. I created a written symbol for each character that minimized pen strokes. "k" for example is just a sideways "v," which saves the vertical stroke. "m" is just an arch. I also ignored unnecessary letters, so the word "letters" could be shortened to "ltrs."

The final step was finding a way to shorten the most common English words and character strings. I came up with 2 mechanisms: capitalization and spacing. This turned out to be really flexible. A "g" just means "g," but "G" can mean different things depending on whether it's in a word or spaced alone. So in a word it replaces "ing," but standalone it is the word "get." So let's say I wanted to write the sentence:

"I am going to the store to get a bag of potatoes."

I could type this:

i gG t T str t G a bg ptatos

(A final question you might have: how did I capitalize those handwritten symbols? I decided not to make a whole other set of unique symbols, but instead just put a little apostrophe, as in (m'), or "m prime.")

EDIT: I have also started using some of the symbols on the keyboard to symbolize project planning, and I use these in handwriting too. "%" is chance or odds, "!" is an experiment or prototype, "^" is a decision.

[jodrellblank]

Now I think I see what you mean - "work digitally" meaning a shorthand you can use with a keyboard? Rather than one you could hand-draw on a tablet and then use an OCR style thing.

It's not phonetic, but it's got some of the same approaches like -ing suffix being a single symbol.

Interesting, thanks :)