My New Hobby

I'm teaching myself shorthand! It's really fun. I'm using the second edition of Gregg's Shorthand Manual Simplified which is the original 1955 version, including helpful photographs of secretaries and their bosses with captions such as: "The businessman insists that his letters be correctly punctuated and that they contain no spelling errors. This secretary has taken her employer's dictation and checked the spelling of any words about which she was in doubt when she transcribed. Her employer is obviously pleased with the letter!"

From Wikipedia:

Gregg shorthand is a form of stenography that was invented by John Robert Gregg in 1888. Like cursive longhand, it is completely based on elliptical figures and lines that bisect them.^[1] Gregg shorthand is the most popular form of pen stenography in the United States and its Spanish adaptation is fairly popular in Latin America. With the invention of dictation machines, shorthand machines, and the practice of executives writing their own letters on their personal computers, however, the use of shorthand gradually declined in the business and reporting world. Gregg shorthand is still in use today.

Several versions of this system were published. Pre-Anniversary, which includes the first five editions, the first one published in two small paper-covered pamphlets in 1888, the second published in 1893,^[2] the third in book form in 1897, the fourth in 1905,^[3] and the fifth in 1916.^[4] Anniversary, a revised and simplified form published in 1929, called Anniversary because it was to be published on the fortieth anniversary of the system (1928), but there was some delay in publication.^[5] In 1949, Simplified was created, in which many of the principles and memorized forms were removed or simplified due to findings of studies by the publishers and suggestions of many shorthand teachers.^[6] Diamond Jubilee was published in 1963, which simplified the Simplified version.^[7] Series 90 was published in 1978, which simplified it further.^[8] The last version was Centennial, published in 1988, with several similarities to the Diamond Jubilee system earlier.^[9] Besides these main editions, which were designed for the dictation speeds expected of any shorthand system of the time, a number of simpler, personal-use editions were published from 1924 to 1968. These included "Greghand" in 1935, and "Notehand" in 1960 and 1968.^[10]