Difference Between Longhand and Shorthand in Writing
Difference Between Longhand and Shorthand
LONGHAND are words that we write in our daily lives. They are what we transcribe in shorthand. Shorthand is based on longhand. Anyone who has learned to read and write longhand can learn to read and write shorthand; it is as simple as that. Strokes you will write in shorthand are those that you are accustomed to writing in longhand. In fact, many of the strokes in shorthand alphabet are derived directly from the longhand forms.
In many ways, shorthand is easier to learn than longhand. In shorthand, you will have to learn only one way to represent a letter; in longhand, you had to learn many different ways to represent each letter.
Principles of Writing Shorthand
In the English language, many words contain letters that are not pronounced. In shorthand, these silent letters are omitted, only the sounds that are actually pronounced in a word are written. All shorthand characters are based on sound, therefore, only those sounded letters are represented with shorthand characters. Shorthand characters are written in the order in which they are sounded. Thus, stenography or shorthand is a process by which words are written in symbols according to the way they are sounded or pronounced.