Frances Tew is a Dickens Decoder. She has taught Teeline shorthand for twenty years to students on journalism courses. In the second of two blogs she explains how we teach shorthand today and reflects on Dickens as a shorthand teacher.
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Shorthand today
Frances Tew is a Dickens Decoder. She has taught Teeline shorthand for twenty years to students on journalism courses. In the first of two blogs she tells us what modern shorthand is all about.
Chinnery Summer Transcription Challenge: Solutions
This summer, the Dickens Decoders turned their attention to another user of the Gurney shorthand system: the artist George Chinnery (1774-1852). Check out the results and download a transcript here.
Chinnery shorthand: Some snakes and ladders
Our Chinnery summer transcription is proving something of a ‘staggerer’. In a second guest blog, V&A research fellow Patrick Conner provides some help, explaining how Chinnery used shorthand in his sketches, as well as recurring phrases and signs and potential pitfalls.
Charles Dickens, George Chinnery, and Gurney shorthand
What did Charles Dickens and the artist George Chinnery have in common? Both were practitioners of Gurney’s Brachygraphy shorthand. Find out more about what connects these two fascinating figures in a guest blog by Patrick Conner.
Letter to Bentley progress
May’s ‘Letter to Bentley’ shorthand decoding challenge turned out to be the trickiest yet. Find out more about our progress here…
‘Easter Nonsense’ aka ‘All privileges…’ transcript
The ‘Easter Nonsense’ challenge has turned out to be a critique of hereditary privileges. Read the text and download a transcript here.
‘Didactic’ transcript
‘Didactic’ has turned out to be a short piece criticising Rome and commenting on Catholicism in terms similar to Dickens’s ‘Pictures from Italy’ (1846). Download a transcript here.
‘Sunday Night 5 February 1860’ part I transcript
Thanks to Dickens Decoders Shane Baggs and Ken Cox, a source has been discovered for the shorthand text mysteriously titled ‘Sunday Night 5 February’. Find out more and download a transcript here.
Transcription for ‘Travelling’ part III
Download the shorthand transcript for ‘Travelling’ part III here, which has been solved with the help of the Dickens Decoders.