I was pleased to see a fellow blogger extolling the virtues of shorthand but he seemed concerned, as everyone does, that it is far surpassed, in terms of practicality, by the dictaphone. I suppose there is no doubt that using a dictaphone will mean getting that extra snippet of information but I really believe that shorthand has a lot more going for it than that.
1. Quality Not Quantity:
In some respects the genius thing about using shorthand is that you don't get a record of every 'um' 'ah' and false start sentence. You get exactly what you need and thus it is a much more manageable entity to work your way through when it comes to transcribing.
2. The Wonder of the Human Eye:
When transcribing, if you have a pad of shorthand you can transcribe exactly one line at a time without rewinding and fastforwarding (which wastes unbelievable amounts of time). Equally, you can scan the pad for key quotes that you need and pick them out without searching through a recording.
3. Trust:
It's silly for people to think that a dictaphone recording is more dependable than shorthand. Shorthand does need to be practiced to be at its best. However, eventually it should be as strong as standard writing and it is rare for a journalist to doubt his or her longhand. Equally, even during the time we have spent on our course technology has failed to record one student's interview with someone in America, the batteries have run out for another and for myself, the background noise that was picked up on one of my recordings drowned out the best part of the interview. With shorthand you know whether you have everything as you go along - you can ask people to slow down or reiterate and you can double-check your notes with them. You only find out how successful your recording is when you get it home.
4. Having a Secret Code is Nice:
Sad but true.
I rest my case.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Good points well made
/ u C, n -_?
Transcribe that using my bastardised key pad shorthand - just to point out it makes grammatical sense, just not literal sense as a question I need answering - has that made it clearly or more confusing?
So we gathered it's 'are you coming in today'. Admittedly, it took me much longer than my spiel about how quick and easy to use shorthand is would suggest but it was a hybrid text and shorthand language.
Ah we must refine our secret code.
Post a Comment