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Comment by ergothus | Hacker News Reader

My issue with this has always been that my longhand is terrible, and writing under pressure makes it worse.

Longhand notes (which I do frequently for the RPGs I run, so practice isnt the issue) are nigh unreadable. I literally have dozens of notebooks (not full, but at least 30 - 50 pages each is pretty common ) of notes I struggle to read and organize.

Being able to write with speed and br able to read them is why an elementary school teacher recommended that I try using a computer to write on back before laptops were a thing, and it remains a big reason I rely on them for work notes now.

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I got frustrated that I enjoyed writing on nice paper with nice pens, and yet I could type much faster than I could write. So about 4 years ago I started learning shorthand. I use shorthand plus icons as needed to pull out important concepts. It's really helpful. Most of the time very little transcription is needed.

How did you learn. Where should someone start? I think now is the perfect time to learn shorthand since we have abandon hand writing completely due to overusing computer, mobile etc

Don't know if this is just me, but just short hand the entire lecture - it keeps your brain in check that you are understanding each word. Even if it doesn't read back you'll retain a lot more than just passive listening.

I wonder if adults can improve their handwriting.

Most skills are things that you can get better at.

I bought a nice fountain pen (well, a $14 pilot) and overhauled my cursive writing. It took about 6 weeks and I write pretty legibly in cursive. I'm more legible in various print scripts (that I have also worked on as an adult), but cursive is faster.

Admittedly, that is just an anecdote. But if you're curious, try and get better... you'll likely improve if you actively practice.

I'm also a fountain pen user.

I never liked pure cursive and do a mix, it's more of a print-sive where some letters are always print (F, J, G, Q, a couple others) and others are cursive depending on flow, speed, etc.

I have a bit more practice because I also sketchnote.

> but cursive is faster

Have you tested? I recall - maybe a decade ago - seeing a study suggesting that in fact printing individual letters could be faster; I still write in cursive when I need to handwrite though (basically never).

Edit: http://nautil.us/issue/40/learning/cursive-handwriting-and-o... is a good summary; first 2 paras of last section are the TL;DR.

No, I haven't actually tested it. Maybe it just feels that way. But it does feel that way.

I suspect it more typically degrades. I always had poor handwriting scores but, over time, I wrote more and more for my personal consumption and speed became more important than style. Arguably shorthand would be more useful for people in general than impeccable Palmer script.

Not to mention archiving it. As a VC I’m taking notes on companies I meet with an need to get them into our CRM for future review

Yes, it at least partly depends on the reason you are taking notes. If it's purely to use for studying that's one thing. But if it's for writing a story, a trip report, or for otherwise sharing, there are a lot of reasons to have more of a verbatim record.

Ideally, I suppose I'd have an accurate transcript and I could just take time-stamped notes that could key to that transcript but that's not the reality. (I know I can record audio but, in practice, going back to audio after the fact is just too much work for most purposes.)

Take scribble notes, but then dictate them in with further comment immediately after. Speaking is ~150 wpm

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