shorthand

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
September 12, 2003

Dear SW List, Sandy and Tini -
The majority of SignWriting users around the world, as far as I can
tell, write SignWriting by hand. Computer users are the minority...

Since SignWriting was developed before the personal computer was
invented, that makes sense!

Shorthand is not used everyday by people who write English. They use
handwriting, even though Pittman Shorthand and Gregg Shorthand systems
exist...

Same with SignWriting...We have a successful shorthand system already
developed in the 1980's:

Shorthand
http://www.SignWriting.org/forums/linguistics/ling005.html

However, that is not what is used for daily use around the world. For
daily use, we use SignWriting Handwriting...there is a course on the
web...

Handwriting
http://www.signwriting.org/lessons/cursive/curs001.html

Val ;-)

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On Friday, September 12, 2003, at 10:28 AM, Sandy Fleming wrote:

> Hi Tini and everyone,
>
>>> Sandy you were talking about shorthand in Sign Writing. I am very
> interested in it too. When I am asking a deaf person here in town for
> advise
> I often whished I knew short hand. I have done some scribbling myself,
> see
> attachment, but it is far from perfect.<<
>
> I like the idea of just not drawing the flat hand shape - I find this
> the
> most difficult shape to draw, especially when it's at an angle. This
> won't
> work very well when there aren't enough fingers, will it? The "flat
> hand,
> open thumb" shape will just be a little tick! Or have you thought of a
> way?
> You could draw a straight line through the knuckles to show the hand
> in the
> floor plane, I think that would work for that.
>
> The idea of just not drawing the hand and just drawing the fingers is
> really
> good, though, especially since fingers are so easy to draw  :)  It
> gave me
> an idea for writing pronouns just as fingers (see the attached scan for
> BSL). I think this is good, because even although it only applies to a
> few
> words, these are words that are used very often in BSL - I mean people
> point
> all the time when they're signing! Another good thing is that it's not
> really departing from Val's notation at all, it's just missing out
> elements
> that aren't really needed for comprehension.
>
> This is a bit like in English where very frequent words are sometimes
> spelled more simply, eg "be, we, me" rather than "bee, wee, mee". And
> then
> there are shorthand systems where you just write the strokes for "b,
> w, m".
>
> (It seems that I change my hand orientation when I point to the right
> - this
> may just be me!)
>
> Does it make sense? Any other ideas?
>
> Sandy
> <pronouns.gif>