Start reading now at:

• Part 1
• Part 2

If anyone has a lead on:

• the list of recognized contractions issued by the Cambridge Shorthand Society or
• any editions of the Orthic Monthly magazine
• any examples of issued teaching diplomas or speed certificates
• a copy of the list of schools adopting Orthic shorthand that was once available upon request

please do reach out!

• Psalms 1-20 in full style serves as both exercise book and exam for the completion of Lessons 1 through 3.
• Psalms 21-39 in ordinary style serves likewise for Lessons 4 through 5.
• Psalms 40-65 in abbreviated style (also called Supplement style) serves likewise for Lessons 6 through 8, at which point you’re expected to be writing 60 WPM and reading fluently. (Lesson 9 is a capstone with some final guidance and a reminder to review the list of recognized contractions issued by the Society, which list appears to be lost.)

With these volumes, we now have in hand a complete course of study (using 19th Century pedagogy techniques, granted) used in practice to take students to fluency in non-reporting Orthic.

If anyone has a lead on the reporting-style Psalms volume, that list of contractions, or any editions of the Orthic Monthly magazine, please do reach out!

• Part 1 is 19 pages (including the front and back cover) and provides a series of 9 lessons for teaching the base system.
• Part 2 extends the system by providing rules for reporting that build on the existing shortening techniques. It adds one character, a vertical bar for B, which is to be used only medially (so: not in bat, not in tab, yes in tabby). The file has 18 pages, again including the covers in that count.

These were published 4 years after the Supplement and, I believe, complete the entire Orthic shorthand theory as developed by the Cambridge Shorthand Society.

While you could always use your browser’s built-in search feature, this actually narrows what you see on the screen, so you can browse only matches, and it ignores any matches elsewhere on the page: it’s a lot easier to search the dictionary for “the” now!

I’m looking forward to using it to find examples of odd joins to review, such as how to write “oa”: https://orthic.shorthand.fun/dictionary?q=oa&in=orthic#dictionary. (As you can see, the URL also updates to reflects the search terms: q=oa => search for oa, in=orthic within the Orthic. This means you can share or bookmark your search results for later.)

In addition to those entertaining reads, you’ll find:

• direct links to the English-language specimens from both Manual and Supplement
• a link to Stevens’ rendition of the New Testament

Stevens’ writing is a goldmine of advanced abbreviating techniques. (The text was apparently chosen due to ready availability of the key. That has certainly proven a sound bet.)

Smaller changes:

• The Supplement page now links to the Supplement source PDF
• The Dictionary now includes all the Manual’s word and phrase images. (Many of the entries still need some work, as evidenced by the frequency of “TODO” in the entries, but the images are there.)

The dictionary is also linked from the Resources list in the menu at the top of every page.

To start with, it contains the briefs from the Manual. Many of the resources are already in place to support this work, thanks to the online Manual and Supplement, but the raw materials need marshaling into shape to make up a dictionary.

Many thanks to Redditor u/CrBr of the Orthic subreddit for their encouragement in finally starting this project.

The briefs and endings are their own self-links, for easy copy-paste when talking about them with other writers. They also follow a predictable pattern in anchor naming, so that the brief for “down” is at #down-brief and the ending for “ward” is at #ward-ending.

The letters and significant joins have links collected at the top of the “How to Write and Join the Characters” section. These mostly follow the pattern set by “nsp” having the anchor #nsp-join, but some editorial decisions led to names like “U versus EE” (which gets #u-versus-ee-join as its anchor).

Download the Shorthand::Orthic Anki deck to study the briefs and affixes from both the Manual and the Supplement. This deck assumes you already have the basics of the alphabet down. (I don’t feel Anki is the best tool for learning a new alphabet, so I didn’t use it for that.)

Anki is a smart flashcard system: it tries to show you a card shortly before you’re likely to forget it, so that time spent reviewing is not wasted on cards you know through and through. When you first load in a bundle of cards, it can feel like a lot of reviews, but once you get through the deck, it settles down a lot. Don’t hesitate to throttle back the number of new cards and reviews to something you feel is manageable, or simply to just not do all the reviews if that’s what makes it workable for you. Coming back every day and spending five minutes quizzing yourself will slowly but steadily grow your vocabulary like magic.