Most people will probably never bother to learn any alternative handwriting system. (Eric Lee)

In some ways, true. In other ways, the Palm Pilot taught countless people how to use a stroke-based writing system that was modeled closely on the standard English alphabet, but not entirely.

Graffiti, Palm’s stroke-based writing system.

Today, I had a marvelous conversation with the Sandra DuChene, Asisstant to the President at Allegheny College. I helped her with something she was struggling with in Meeting Maker (some thrice-damned scheduling application for Windows), tried to diagnose an infinite print job she had running, and discovered that she knows shorthand. (I went in to make an appointment with El Presidente, but these kinds of conversations just happen to me.)

I have never had the opportunity to speak at length with someone proficient in shorthand. It was absolutely fascinating—shorthand is a glyph-based writing system that is completely phonetic. As notational systems go, it makes absolute sense. While the alphabet is larger than English (Gregg shorthand has around 360 glyphs, from what I understand), it maps directly to the sounds of words, meaning the glyphs can be spoken out loud with no loss of information. From my recent readings regarding reading research (really!), this makes for a very learnable and readable system.

I stole this example from omniglot.com:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act
towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Palm created Graffiti (their stroke-based writing system, above) because it was easier to correctly recognize standardized glyphs than it is to recognize freehand writing in the wild. I think a good Senior thesis project might be to develop a shorthand recognition system. Shorthanders can achieve speeds of 135+ words per minute if they are proficient, which is far faster than I can type (80-90 WPM with a reasonable error rate). However, the transcription process is tedious. A system coupled with modern dictionary lookup techniques could easily transcribe the glyphs of shorthand (which are finite in number) and use dictionary-based techniques to convert those glyphs into text. Yes, there are few users of shorthand now, but that doesn’t make it a fascinating (and potentially useful open-source) project.

I’ll have to start a file of ideas for student projects*.

My stop by the President’s office yielded an unexpected and wonderful conversation, and I invited Sandra to please give a lecture in one of my Programming Language slots early next semester. Given that the study of programming languages involves the study of notational systems and their interpretation, having an experienced shorthander talk about the language and how she has used it during her lifetime should be a fascinating talk.

* Ah. It turns out I’ll want to do some more literature work before I consider such a thing. Perhaps it wouldn’t make a good project. Either way, it will still be a neat talk.