"Taking Notes" = "Tkng Nts"

Posted by Braden

Sometimes I think it would be really nice to have a laptop to take notes in class. There are few things more frustrating than missing the last few lines of notes on a slide and knowing that you're going to be tested over the information that you just missed. One method I've been using to minimize this risk:

Skppng vwls in the wrds I wrt on my ppr. Nw, I knw it isn't the prttst thng to lk at, bt fce it, you cn stll rd wht I'm wrtng, cn't you? And it crtnly svs tm onc you gt gd at it. The cntxt of the wrds tpcally tk cr of any uncrtnties, and it's nt the wrst thng in the wrld if you nd to add a vwl or two in a lng wrd for clrty's sk, lk I jst dd in "uncrtnties."

Now I obviously don't skip all the vowels: leading vowels stay. When a word is only two letters long, it gets both letters; otherwise "at," "it," and "to" would all look the same, as would "in," "on," and "no." And if a word is one syllable long but doesn't end with a consonant sound—such as "the" or "you"—it usually gets to keep its final vowel(s) as well. There are a few other things to watch for, such as silent Es; they are included when they change the sound of the letter before them. Thus, the word "face" becomes "fce"; the word "once" however becomes "onc" because there really aren't many words that begin in "onc." I know, it sounds like a headache, but shorthand is really rather intuitive once you start doing it. And like I said, it isn't too terrible if you accidentally add vowels in places where they wouldn't be normally—just don't make a habit of it; it'll slw you dwn.