Pitman Shorthand: The World Record System

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PITMAN SHORTHAND: THE WORLD RECORD SYSTEM By John W. Harrell Introduction The greatest speed and accuracy records writing and reading shorthand throughout all time have been made by Pitman writers, — proving conclusively that the Pitman System gives to the writer greater speed capacity and greater accuracy in reading than any other System in existence. It follows therefore, that just as the Pitman System gives to the most expert writers greater speed and accuracy than any other system, it gives to the novice, or the average shorthand writer greater speed and accuracy than he could develop with any other system. Therefore, knowing as we do that one hundred words a minute is about the average speed attained by most stenographers, and that it is necessary to be able to write about one hundred words a minute to hold an average stenographic position, we can readily understand why more than eighty-five per cent of the stenographers employed by the Government and in every Department of Commercial and Professional Service are Pitman Writers. The United States Government employs 1579 Stenographers in the nine departments at Washington and 1356 of them are Pitman Writers, — more than 85%. The World's Best Record learning Pitman Shorthand was made by students of this "World Record Course." Excerpt Without any previous knowledge of any system of shorthand, Miss Ruby Slaton and Miss Hazel Minor learned Pitman Shorthand by the Harrell Method so thoroughly within three months that they took their final examinations separately — unfamiliar matter dictated at a speed of one hundred words a minute — their shorthand notes were exchanged, and each transcribed the other's shorthand notes thus written rapidly without assistance, and there was not an error in the transcript of either. To make the test more rigid and severe, and to subject them to all of the embarrassment incident to a first experience as stenographer in a business office — the crucial test of a stenographer's competency — they were sent separately to the offices of The Franklin Life Insurance Company where the Cashier, Mr. Frank Reedy, a stranger to them, selected from his files the letters of which photographic reductions are shown on the following pages, dictated one of them to Miss Hazel Minor and the other to Miss Ruby Slaton. Neither of the young ladies heard the dictation to the other. Mr. Reedy took their shorthand notes as soon as they were written and exchanged them. Without any assistance whatever from each other or otherwise, and with no previous knowledge whatever of the nature or the contents of the letter either had to transcribe, they transcribed each other's shorthand notes rapidly and without error. . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Windham Press is committed to bringing the lost cultural heritage of ages past into the 21st century through high-quality reproductions of original, classic printed works at affordable prices. This book has been carefully crafted to utilize the original images of antique books rather than error-prone OCR text. This also preserves the work of the original typesetters of these classics, unknown craftsmen who laid out the text, often by hand, of each and every page you will read. Their subtle art involving judgment and interaction with the text is in many ways superior and more human than the mechanical methods utilized today, and gave each book a unique, hand-crafted feel in its text that connected the reader ally to the art of bindery and book-making. We think these benefits are worth the occasional imperfection resulting from the age of these books at the time of scanning, and their vintage feel provides a connection to the past that goes beyond the mere words of the text.