---
aliases:
  - gregg notehand
title: Gregg Notehand
tags:
  - authorship/other
  - exclude-from-word-count
  - type/media/book
authors:
  - Deese, James
  - Leslie, Louis A.
  - Poe, Roy W.
  - Zoubek, Charles E.
edition: Second
publisher: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
subtitle: A Personal-Use Shorthand & Integrated Instruction in How to Make Notes
type: book
year: 1968
---
# Gregg Notehand

## Part One

### 1. Fundamental principles of notemaking

### 2-8. Notehand principles

### 9. Getting ready to study

### 10. Planning your study time

### 11. Select the right notebook for notemaking

### 12. Notemaking from reading

### 13. Rules for remembering what you read

### 14. Notehand recall

### 15. Finding the central idea in your reading

### 16. Finding the central idea in your reading (continued)

### 17. Selecting related ideas

### 18. Using the central idea to build your headings

### 19. Read before you make notes

### 20. Notehand recall

### 21. Making notes in your own words

### 22. Brevity in making notes in your own words

### 23. Organizing notes in narrative summaries

### 24. Organizing notes in outline form

### 25. Leave wide margins

### 26. Notehand recall

### 27. Use longhand headings in your notes

### 28. Use signals for "must remember" items

### 29. Making verbatim notes

### 30. The notemaker is an active listener

### 31. Getting the most out of your listening

### 32. Writing names in your notes

### 33. Notehand recall

### 34. Rules for effective listening

### 35. Rules for effective listening (continued)

### 36. Preserve difficult longhand spellings

### 37. Showing contrasts and comparisons in your notes

### 38. Definitions, background information, and examples

### 39. Notehand recall

### 40. Using notehand in original writing

### 41. Making rough drafts

### 42. Footnotes

### 43. Special uses of notehand in original writing

### 44. How to make notes for research papers

### 45. Getting ready to make notes from research

### 46. Making notes from research

### 47. Writing the research paper

### 48. Notehand recall

## Part Two

### 49. Reviewing and preparing for examinations

### 50. Making derived notes

### 51. Making notes of class discussions

### 52. Making notes of other meetings and discussions

### 53. Making notes as a recorder

### 54. Writing the minutes

### 55. Indexing your notes

### 56. Disposition of your notes

### 57-70. Notehand principles

### Key to Gregg Notehand

### Index to Gregg Notehand

## Gregg Notehand

Gregg Notehand is a simplified form of Gregg Shorthand.
It is described in the namesake [[leslie-et-al_1968_gregg-notehand]]

### Critiques

The lessons use sounds-like-(letter)-in-(word) type phoneme definitions,
and generally suffer from a facile understanding of phonology.
Totally unacceptable for a proposed alternative alphabet,
but then the text does not understand that's what it's proposing.

> [[leslie-et-al_1968_gregg-notehand#2-8. Notehand principles]]
> **Silent letters omitted.**
> In the English language many words contain letters that are not pronounced.
> In Notehand these silent letters are omitted,
> and only those sounds in a word are written that are actually pronounced.
> For example,
> in the word say, the y would not be written because it is not pronounced;
> say would be written s-a.
> The word face would be written f-a-s;
> the final e would be omitted because it is not pronounced,
> and the c would be represented by the s stroke because it is pronounced s.
>
> What letters in the following words would not be written in Notehand
> because they are not pronounced?
>
> * day
> * eat
> * main
> * mean
> * save
> * steam

***

> [[leslie-et-al_1968_gregg-notehand#2-8. Notehand principles]]
> Gregg Notehand is easy to learn---easier, actually, than longhand. Why?
> In longhand, there are many different ways of writing a given letter;
> in Gregg Notehand, there is only one way.

This is a baffling first paragraph.
Without further clarification,
the text seems to be implying that students learning longhand
are expected to learn to read and write
many forms of the same letter,
where reality is the opposite.

In fact, it is plain to see from the lessons in the text
that Gregg Notehand had far more individual character variation
than is accepted of the English alphabet.

The text does not specify winding direction for circular forms
(e.g. "a" and "e"),
nor is the illustrator consistent between words.
For many words, neither option is more intuitive,
and the choice _radically_ changes its form.

More damningly, in Lesson 26 we learn
the "s" stroke _is allowed to be written backwards._

It's a very strange choice,
claiming that a shorthand is less ambiguous
than the writing system it replaces.
I'm sure its possible,
but English doesn't have enough frills to cut off.
Shorthand trades certainty for speed,
that's the whole point.

***

Some words, especially those more than one syllable,
I believe are illustrated incorrectly
based on preceding text and examples.
"Navy" is particularly egregious.
