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Comment by sieste | Hacker News Reader

Trading off writing speed for legibility seems wrong to me. Writing fast is a skill that can be learned by regular practice. If you spend half the time to learn an illegible code like orthic on simply practicing your usual handwriting you'll end up writing quite a bit faster while increasing legibility. I would try that first.

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It's meant to be decoded into regular text later. Main usage is taking notes or dictation.

Trying to write as fast as an average person speaks makes it very hard to do anything else, like be an attentive conversation partner, but scribbling some notes down in shorthand so you can return to them later is really useful.

Orthic has a much greater economy of strokes, so it's as much about convenience as it is about speed. That is, you can write quite quickly without actually rushing.

It also does not take long to learn because many of the consonants are simplified versions of ordinary letters (such as 'C', 'G', 'b', 'n', 'm' and so on), whereas the vowels are just lines.

And so I don't think your recommended strategy would pay off.

It’s legible to those who know it.

Right. And 90% of the writing I do today is writing out notes to myself while I plan or work through problems in my notebook. That kind of writing doesn’t need to be legible to anyone else.

Shorthand was never a commonly used technology by "normal" people and as I understand it even proficient users would not use it for their personal notes. It was used in situations where minimizing writing time was important, and then transcribed into standard writing shortly afterwards, while it was still fresh in their minds. It's not a replacement for writing, it's a replacement for a tape recorder.

Writing fast with the English alphabet puts a strain on one's hand. You won't feel it unless you already have hand issues. You can keep adjusting how you grip the pen to improve things, but there is a baseline limit due to the orthography.

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