a system for rapid writing that uses symbols or abbreviations for letters, words, or phrases. Among the most popular modern systems are Pitman, Gregg, and Speedwriting.

Besides being known as stenography (close, little, or narrow writing), shorthand is sometimes called tachygraphy (swift writing) and brachygraphy (short writing). Because shorthand can be written rapidly, the writer is able to record the proceedings of legislative bodies, the testimony of law courts, or dictation in business correspondence. In addition, shorthand has been used through the centuries as a cultural tool: George Bernard Shaw wrote his plays in shorthand; Samuel Pepys recorded his diary in shorthand; Cicero's orations, Martin Luther's sermons, and Shakespeare's plays were all preserved by means of shorthand.

Through the centuries shorthand has been written in systems based on orthography (normal spelling), on phonetics (the sounds of words), and on arbitrary symbols, such as a small circle within a larger circle to represent the phrase, “around the world.” Most historians date the beginnings of shorthand with the Greek historian Xenophon, who used an ancient Greek system to write the memoirs of Socrates. It was in the Roman Empire, however, that shorthand first became generally used. Marcus Tullius Tiro, a learned freedman who was a member of Cicero's household, invented the notae Tironianae (“Tironian notes”), the first Latin shorthand system. Devised in 63 BC, it lasted over a thousand years. Tiro also compiled a shorthand dictionary. Among the early accomplished shorthand writers were the emperor Titus, Julius Caesar, and a number of bishops. With the beginning of the Middle Ages in Europe, however, shorthand became associated with witchcraft and magic, and disappeared.

While he was archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket (c. 1118–70) encouraged research into Tiro's shorthand. By the 15th century, with the discovery in a Benedictine monastery of a lexicon of Ciceronian notes and a Psalter written in Tironian shorthand, a renewed interest in the practice was aroused. Somewhat influenced by Tiro's system, Timothy Bright designed an English system in 1588 that consisted of straight lines, circles, and half circles. (Tiro's method was cursive, based on longhand script.) Bright's system was called Characterie: an Arte of Shorte, Swifte, and Secrete Writing by Character.

The 17th century produced four important inventors of shorthand systems: John Willis, who is considered to be the father of modern shorthand; Thomas Shelton, whose system was used by Samuel Pepys to write his famous diary; Jeremiah Rich, who popularized the art by publishing not only his system but also the Psalms and the New Testament in his method of shorthand; and William Mason, whose method was used to record sermons and to translate the Bible in the years following the Reformation. Mason's system was later adapted and became the official system of the British Parliament.

Several other systems were invented in the next decades, but most of them were short-lived. One of the most successful was that of the British stenographer Samuel Taylor, who invented a system in 1786 that was based on that of one of his predecessors. Taylor's method was adapted into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, German, Dutch, Hungarian, and other languages.

The Industrial Revolution brought a demand for stenographers in business. Because the geometric systems then in use required a high level of education and long training, a need existed for a method that would be easier to learn. The German Franz Xaver Gabelsberger (1789–1849) turned away from geometric methods and developed a simple cursive system. Gabelsberger's system, which he called “Speech-sign art,” was based on Latin longhand characters and had a neatness and beauty of outline that is unsurpassed. It enjoyed a spontaneous success and spread to Switzerland, Austria, Scandinavia, Finland, and Russia. The system's simplicity made it an easy matter to translate it into other languages, and in 1928 it became the Italian national system.

Sir Isaac Pitman (Pitman, Sir Isaac) (1813–97), an educator who advocated spelling reform, was knighted by Queen Victoria for his contributions to shorthand. Pitman had learned Taylor's method of shorthand but saw its weakness and designed his own system to incorporate writing by sound, the same principle he advocated in phonetic longhand spelling. He published his system in 1837, calling it Stenographic Sound-Hand (Pitman shorthand). It consisted of 25 single consonants, 24 double consonants, and 16 vowel sounds. Similar, related sounds were represented by similar signs, shading was used to eliminate strokes, the shortest signs were used to represent the shortest sounds, and single strokes were used to represent single consonants. At first, the principle of positioning to express omitted vowels—i.e., writing the word above, on, or below the line of writing—was reserved until later lessons, after the theory had been presented. Later, positioning was introduced with the first lesson.

In 1852 Isaac Pitman's brother, Benn Pitman, brought the system to America, where, with several slight modifications, it became the method most extensively used in the United States and Canada. An investigation in 1889 stated that 97 percent of the shorthand writers in America used the Isaac Pitman system or one of its modifications. Pitman shorthand has been adapted to Afrikaans, Arabic, Armenian, Dutch, French, Gaelic, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Spanish, and other languages.

The Irish-born John Robert Gregg (Gregg, John Robert) (1867–1948) taught himself at the age of 10 an adaptation of Taylor's shorthand. He then studied Pitman by himself but disliked its angles, shading, and positioning. Later, while in his early teens, he read a history of shorthand by Thomas Anderson, a member of the Shorthand Society of London. Anderson listed the essentials of a good shorthand system, stating that no method then in use possessed them: independent characters for the vowels and consonants, all characters written with the same thickness, all characters written on a single line of writing, and few and consistent abbreviation principles.

Gregg was 18 when he invented his own system and 21 when he published it in the form of a pamphlet, Light-Line Phonography (Gregg shorthand) (1888). The Gregg system was predominantly a curve-motion shorthand with circles, hooks, and loops. Based on the ellipse or oval and on the slope of longhand, its motion was curvilinear. Obtuse angles were eliminated by natural blending of lines, vowels were joined, shading was eliminated, and writing was lineal, or in one position.

In 1893 Gregg took his system to the United States, and Light-Line Phonography became Gregg Shorthand. The inventor found that, except for the eastern coastal cities, shorthand was virtually unknown. At that time high schools began teaching shorthand, and Gregg traveled through the Midwest, the West, and the South, selling his system and demonstrating his teaching methods with great success. The Gregg system supplanted Pitman's as the predominant system taught in the United States. It also spread to Canada and to the British Isles. Gregg shorthand has been published in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Russian, Italian, Tagalog, Japanese, Thai, Chinese, Scottish Gaelic, Esperanto, Sinhalese, and Polish.

An early German system of importance was the Stolze-Schrey method. Wilhelm Stolze invented his system at about the same time as Gabelsberger and along similar lines. In 1885 Ferdinand Schrey, a Berlin merchant, attempted to simplify the Gabelsberger system. Sometime later the Stolze and Schrey methods were merged and became the leading system in Germany and Switzerland. Stolze-Schrey shorthand was also adapted to other languages, including Danish, Dutch, English, French, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish.

In 1924, after two decades of development, a new system based on the Gabelsberger and Stolze-Schrey methods was completed. As revised in 1936 and 1968, the Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift is the principal system now used in Germany and Austria.

The system of Speedwriting shorthand was created around 1924 by Emma Dearborn, an instructor at Columbia University. Her method was designed to be taken down on the typewriter; but in 1942 it was changed to be written by hand with pen or pencil. Speedwriting shorthand uses the letters of the alphabet and the known punctuation marks to represent sounds. For example, the sound of ch is written with a capital C; the word each is thus written eC. More than 20,000 words in the Speedwriting dictation can be written with a total of 60 rules and a list of approximately 100 brief forms and standard abbreviations. Speedwriting shorthand is taught in several languages—including English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Flemish, and Afrikaans—in many countries.

Forkner Alphabet shorthand was first published in 1952 in the United States. The author, Hamden Forkner, spent 10 years in research before publishing the first edition of the new system, which uses a combination of conventional letters and a few symbols for the hard-to-write letters and sounds. For example, H is expressed by a short dash above the line. This same short dash through the letter C gives the ch sound, through the longhand S it gives sh, and across the T it designates th. Abbreviations are used for a number of common words.

Another American method, Hy-Speed Longhand, was first published under that title in 1932. Based on Andrew J. Graham's Brief Longhand, published in 1857, its principles include the omission of silent letters and most vowels, the substitution of letters, numbers, or signs, and the combination of certain letters.

Stenoscript ABC Shorthand is a phonetic system using only longhand and common punctuation marks. It originated in London in 1607 and was revised by Manuel Claude Avancena, who published a modern edition in 1950. Stenoscript has 24 brief forms that must be memorized; e.g., ak stands for acknowledge, ac for accompany, bz for business, and gvt for government.

Stenospeed originated in 1950 in the United States; the first publication was called Stenospeed High Speed Longhand, but in 1951 the system was revised under the name of Stenospeed ABC Shorthand. It is used by many schools as a standard text.

Other alphabetic or partially alphabetic systems have also been devised. Among these is Teeline, a system used extensively in Great Britain.

A method of recording speech by using machines became commercially feasible around 1906, when the Stenotype (stenotypy) machine was invented by Ward Stone Ireland, an American stenographer and court reporter. At present, the Stenograph and Stenotype machines are used in offices to some extent, but they are principally employed for conference and court reporting. Both machines have keyboards of 22 keys. Because the operator uses all fingers and both thumbs, any number of keys can be struck simultaneously. The machines print roman letters on a strip of paper that folds automatically into the back of the machine. The operator controls the keys by touch and is thus able to watch the speaker. The fingers of the left hand control the keys that print consonants occurring before vowels. These keys print on the left side of the tape. The thumbs control the vowels, which are printed in the centre of the tape, and the fingers of the right hand control the consonants that follow the vowels, which are printed on the right side of the tape. There are not separate keys for each letter of the English alphabet; thus, those letters for which there are no keys are represented by combinations of other letters. Abbreviations are used for some of the most frequent words, giving the operator the ability to write two or three words in one stroke.