I have some experience with a German shorthand style (DEK) and it is more important to write clearly. Shorthand removes most of the redundant information that is present in regular alphabets and words. With regular writing, a small error somewhere can be error corrected using the surrounding context.
When I wasn't being careful, I could often read the text shortly after I wrote it, but after a few hours or days it became illegible to me.
There are multiple levels of shorthand, the faster ones drop more and more information from each word if it can be inferred from the context (for someone familiar with the topic, i.e. yourself mainly).
Shorthand never really stuck for me. Learning to write and read it wasn't that difficult actually, but I couldn't quickly scan shorthand notes like I could with regular writing. I suppose that's a matter of practice and I wasn't ready to sink hundreds of hours into just that.
One thing I learned from the experience was how frustrating of an experience it is if you're not good at reading. I have always been an above average reader and I couldn't understand how people struggled so much with it. Reading shorthand was effortful and slow, especially at the very beginning for me and that gave me some perspective of how some of my classmates must have felt.
I suppose it's a little like UIs. Old school, green screen UIs have a learning curve and can result in very efficient usage. Modern, friendly UIs sacrifice speed for presentation and accessibility.
If you want to optimize for legibility rather than speed, a fountain pen with a stub nib might help. Stub nibs are designed to make handwriting look a bit like classic cursive with no effort from the person. But they can also improve handwriting legibility by providing a particular feedback, basically, it stops some bad movements you hand might be doing.
I have most success with nibs which are very smooth but stubby. TWSBI Diamond 580 with 1.1 mm stub nib worked best for me, but it takes bottled ink.
I have found my cursive hand getting much better after spending some time with Gregg shorthand.
The emphasis on curve and proportion in Gregg has made my cursive hand much more regular, flowing and pleasing to the eye. I’m sure similar benefits would accrue to learning and practising Orthic where specific curves, angles and joins have meaning.
oh interesting, i had the opposite experience. my handwriting has always been barely legible and after i started experimenting with gregg it became so much worse!
I use Orthic to jot down notes. It has been perhaps two years since I implemented it. I view it as a tradeoff - it is way easier and faster to write… but harder and slower to read. This is why I use it for brief notes primarily. Perhaps the most consistent issue is mixing up the letters “e” and “u” but there are other ambiguities that creep up too, so sometimes you have to read a word a few times. I think I am getting better though.
There are multiple levels of shorthand, the faster ones drop more and more information from each word if it can be inferred from the context (for someone familiar with the topic, i.e. yourself mainly).
Shorthand never really stuck for me. Learning to write and read it wasn't that difficult actually, but I couldn't quickly scan shorthand notes like I could with regular writing. I suppose that's a matter of practice and I wasn't ready to sink hundreds of hours into just that. One thing I learned from the experience was how frustrating of an experience it is if you're not good at reading. I have always been an above average reader and I couldn't understand how people struggled so much with it. Reading shorthand was effortful and slow, especially at the very beginning for me and that gave me some perspective of how some of my classmates must have felt.