From: Edward Humes (ehumes_at_mac.com)
Date: Fri May 16 2003 - 15:00:29 PDT
On Friday, May 16, 2003, at 01:28 PM, txgitarman_at_attbi.com wrote:
> Sometime recently, Ed Humes wrote under the topic "writers and Newtons"
>
>> short letter combos for common words (a t- for "the," a w- for
>> "with," a s- for "said," and so on. I learned shorthand in high
>> school,
>> so this feels very natural).
>
> I hadn't thought about doing this. This is a great idea! What are some
> more shortcuts?
>
It's pretty much determined by your needs, your imagination and ability
to remember the shortcuts. A lot of standard alphanumeric shorthand
symbols wouldn't work so well on the newt, because they consist of one
letter or symbol (u for you, for instance), nor will the suffix
replacements (a dash at the end of a word for ing). But there's plenty
of room for improvisation. y- for you, f- for for, w- was, and so on.
commonly used connector words are the easiest to remember, and though
the time saved for each one is small, it does add up over the course of
several paragraphs. and i'm finding the consonant/hyphen combos bring
with them high-accuracy rates; for me, vowels, especially a and u, and
o and double o, have the lowest accuracy rates in the hwr. this solves
that problem as well as speeding up my writing.
I think long and difficult names that you write often would be good
choices for expander shortcuts as well. One of the main characters in
my new book is a teacher named Ziolkowski. In my handwritten notes, he
was just Z. With the Newton, I could have made him Z- and have it
automatically become his full name.
You might want to get an old copy of SpeedWriting for more ideas. I'm
realizing as I write this how much I've forgotten; I think I might try
to pick up one,too.
(Of course, there's a philosophical issue here. One of the great
features of Newton hwr, vs. Graffiti, is NOT having to learn special
characters and symbols. )
Hope this helps.
Ed
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