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Comment by sj4nz | Hacker News Reader

While Gregg shorthand is great for English, its not much use for anything technical. Many of the shorthand idioms are based on the word-sound, not the word-spelling, so it's okay if you're taking notes for yourself, reading someone else's shorthand becomes an exercise in decoding the word in context because you were not there for their experience during note-taking.

If you don't stay fresh with your own shorthand, just like your own source code, you can find yourself re-reading your own work and wondering what you were thinking!? That's kind of what this pen in the article semi-solves, by having an audio recording synched with your shorthand.

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That is precisely why the author relies on his smartpen:

"After all, shorthand—at least my shorthand—isn’t foolproof. Even though, for short stretches, I can write 120 words per minute, the average American now speaks at more than 150 words a minute, so something is inevitably lost in the translation. With my trusty Sky smartpen, though, I don’t have to worry. Most of the time, when I get around to writing the story, I can rely on my handwritten notes for short quotes and background information. But when I need a longer, verbatim quote, I can use my notes as a kind of index to find the right part of the interview, and tap there with my pen to hear the playback. No more of the forward/reverse dance with a digital recorder when it’s time to transcribe. It’s an almost flawless system."

The article isn't just about a cool old technology (though he does spend a lot of time on it), but to demonstrate the novel combination of complementary old and new technologies.

My understanding is that it was not generally expected that notes taken by one person would be interpretable by another. This is what I've been told by my mother, who learned and used Pitman shorthand. She says she never had to read anyone else's notes, nor did anyone else ever have a need to read hers.

Reading other people's shorthand was common in larger companies. One secretary would take dictation, and pass it off to another secretary to type it up.

Typing is slower than taking dictation, so you'd potentially have multiple typists typing up the same person's dictated letters at once.

This is largely why note taking is a two pass process for me. The first is the pen and paper notes taken while speaking with someone else. The second is the process of transcribing and editing those notes onto some digital medium. I end up with a really nicely fleshed out document covering much more information, much more thoroughly. For example, for a more complex point in a discussion I may add an additional paragraph or two of background and context to what was actually talked about.

I've found this process to be the best I've tried, and others who I share my notes with have voiced their liking.

If you're not reviewing your notes at least once after you've taken them, you shouldn't even bother taking them. I don't think there are very many exceptions for write-once-and-never-read notes. Note amplification is stronger if your intent is to explain the notes to someone else.

> If you're not reviewing your notes at least once after you've taken them, you shouldn't even bother taking them.

Beethoven would disagree with you,

    Beethoven left behind an enormous number of sketchbooks.
    Yet he himself said he never looked at a sketchbook
    when he actually wrote his compositions. When asked, "Why
    then, do you keep a sketchbook?" he is reported to
    answered, "If I don't write it down immediately I forget it
    right away. If I put it into a sketchbook I never forget it, and
    I never have to look it up again.

Source: http://books.google.no/books?id=1YN3kc31nqAC&pg=PA148&lpg=PA...

Yes, he may have disagreed, but most of us aren't savants with a perfect recall strategy such as this because, well, we need the inhibition to support other functions.

This is also true for me, I almost always took notes in college but it was rare for me to read them except to retrieve formulas that weren't in the course notes.

Jill Price (the Woman who remembers everything)[0] also compulsively kept a journal. What is it about the connection between writing instrument and human brain that doesn't extend to QWERTY? Price also didn't refer back to her journals from what I can tell.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Price

This might be of some help : http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/writing-and-re...

I always thought journalists were hopeless at reporting precise details, but when you compress your notes using such a lossy technique as this, it's not surprising that the facts can get skewed.

There are different types of shorthand. Some are phonetic; some are spelling based. Journalists should be learning teeline which is spelling based.

Journalists should not be losing details and if they are that's their failure to take correct notes, but not an expected feature of using shorthand.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8356000/8356176....

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teeline_Shorthand

Fwiw, I've never met a journalist who knew short land although I'm sure such exist. (I've written plenty of articles myself and don't take shorthand.) I sometimes record interviews, which is good practice for an in-depth interview. For lots of purposes though, you're looking for one of two money quotes and other material that you paraphrase or use as background.

In my experience, when I'm quoted, issues I have aren't so much that "I didn't say that" but that I said something longer and more nuanced which wasn't captured in the quote in question. It's one of the reasons you learn when giving short interviews to hit your key points precisely in a way that doesn't depend on a lot of context.

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