ANCIENT SHORTHAND

Evening Star, Issue 18532, 15 January 1924, Page 1

ANCIENT SHORTHAND

Plutarch mentions tlhe speech on the conspiracy of Cataline as the only one of Cato the Younger’s speeches that has been preserved. On the day that Cato made it Cicero had disposed in various parts of the Senate several of the most expert rapid writers whom he had taught “to make figures comprising numerous words in a few short strokes.” Plutarch adds that) it was then that shorthand writers made the first practical use of the art. But according to a writer in the ‘Century Magazine,’ the earliest us© of an abbreviated form of writing goes back to 200 n.c., when the Roman poet Quintus Ennius used a system of 1,100 signs that he' devised. Tiro, the reporter of the orations of Cicero, was in early life a slave, but, having acquired an education, he found favor with his master, who gave him his freedom, and made him his secretary and confidant. Tiro was evidently a capable stenographer, for once during his absence from Rome Cicero wrote to a friend complaining that his work was delayed, because, whereas he had been able to diatlate to Tiro in periods, he now had to dictate to others in syllables. The system of pothooks tiho't Tiro invented came to be known as the Tironian notes, and was the basis of all the shorthand used during the days of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages. It was. however, merely a system of ideographs, hundreds of different characters that had to be laboriously memorised. Shorthand systems based on phonetic characters were not invented until after the Reformation.