News Journalism: Useful shorthand outlines

In your shorthand studies, you will be taught outlines that are not in the revision guide. These are really helpful, but if you do not make a note of them in a separate book you will loose them – trust me.

While a pain to learn, special outlines if learnt can be your saving grace when speed building.

I have collated a few of the ones I found most useful for you.

As you know                                    As you all know                                As you may know

Press briefing – this is a common offender for me, I could never remember how to write this quickly so this is how I did it. Remember, outlines do not have to be theoretically perfect as long as you know exactly what you mean.

Good morning, Good afternoon and Good evening – these are the most common ways passages start, although they have begun to change this.

The difference between county, country, city and community.

This is really important as passages often contain lots of these to trip you up.

County has a C+N blend with a short T and ‘I’ sound at the end.

Country has a C+N+ TR (just a longer T) blend with the ‘I’ sound at the end.

City is a C with an ‘I’ sound at the end.

Community is a CM blend (a big C) and an ‘I’ sound at the end.

Facility and Factory often come up in the same passage. The special outline for Facility is the ‘ility’ ending. My brain often confused that with factory despite not sounding the same. To correct myself I always remember that the special outline for Fact is CT so factory can be CTR+ ‘I’ ending.

My name is – this is a really simple and essential one to master at the start.

Ladies and gentlemen – this comes up in almost every passage. It is such an easy special outline you will master it after a few passages, committing it to memory forever.

As I am sure you know – there is no special outline in the books, so I made up my own.

Outlines are very personal to you, do what you find easiest and stick with it. Do not get into bad habits at the start as it is very hard to break.

For example, I started off writing one as a ‘u’ which became very confusing later when transcribing. I would recommend starting off with it as 1.

The back of the suggested shorthand book for the course has lots of shorthand outlines, of which my course mate created a Quizlet set for!

I learnt these by using the flashcards and drilling them over and over. It is boring… but couple it with a Percy pig every time you get it right and it becomes tolerable.