Pitman Shorthand Cheat Sheet

By , 1 March 2009

Pitman Shorthand Cheat Sheet

Some time last year a customer who runs a Pitman Shorthand course in Brisbane contacted me. Shorthand is really fascinating and, without knowing it, it was my first real introduction to linguistics because the whole system is phonetic. I had found one of the original Pitman shorthand books in the restricted section of the library at UQ. It was so old that the pages were falling apart - kind of exciting, like a lost art.

It's hard to find shorthand books these days, but I've managed to collect a few - even some reading books. One of the really weird things about reading shorthand is you can read the authors accent (usually British).

Here's a shorthand cheat sheet that I put together for a bit of fun, and just in case all those books disappear one day.

Pitman Shorthand Cheat Sheet

About Roger Keays

Pitman Shorthand Cheat Sheet

Roger Keays is an artist, an engineer, and a student of life. He has no fixed address and has left footprints on 40-something different countries around the world. Roger is addicted to surfing. His other interests are music, psychology, languages, the proper use of semicolons, and finding good food.

Comment posted by: Ryan , 2 years ago

Hi wonderful I met you’re info I have a page written with riddles full of pitman short hand hidden a message by my girlfriend what I can see so far is his moblie number amongest other numbers looking like tafe results cos I know her ex number 

She says it’s a coincidence but I believe it’s not cos she has weird lines dots some lines are darker then others etc if I can send you the picture from hand written page can you help me decipher it for me I want to know before we marry should I have a pre nup or note if you reply happy to forward a picture from the note book to work it out please I’ve been trying to for the last 2 yrs 

Comment posted by: Ryan , 2 years ago

Hi wonderful I met you’re info I have a page written with riddles full of pitman short hand hidden a message by my girlfriend what I can see so far is his moblie number amongest other numbers looking like tafe results cos I know her ex number 

She says it’s a coincidence but I believe it’s not cos she has weird lines dots some lines are darker then others etc if I can send you the picture from hand written page can you help me decipher it for me I want to know before we marry should I have a pre nup or note if you reply happy to forward a picture from the note book to work it out please I’ve been trying to for the last 2 yrs 

Comment posted by: , 7 years ago

Hi Mina, I managed to track down some shorthand books that were discarded by a school library. Nowadays it looks like you can get them on Amazon though.

Comment posted by: mina, 7 years ago
Hi there I studied pitman 2000 at school but recently when l found my text book it was water damaged. Can you please advise where l can purchase an original text book. Many thanks
Comment posted by: , 11 years ago

That is really cool! Nice find.

Comment posted by: charles, 11 years ago

I have been advised that an online program already exists to convert text to shorthand 

http://home.tu-clausthal.de/~rzsjs/steno/Pitman.php

Comment posted by: charles, 11 years ago

I have a dozen pitman 2000 shorthand books. I am still working on a program to change print to shorthand. I dont think it exists yet and all the books have to be drawn by hand. If anyone would like to help me with making the program I would be grateful. The work required would be scanning the words to make an image file. These are then joined together using a dos image joiner. It is not difficult to learn shorthand but it does take a long time. 

Comment posted by: amir, 11 years ago

i want to seek this languages and like it in writing

Comment posted by: Roger Keays, 13 years ago

The symbols are the IPA representation of the vowel. The words are examples which use that vowel. To learn more about IPA, check wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA

Comment posted by: simon, 13 years ago

In the vowels section what does the symbol mean do they mean the word or the thing in brackets?