Signature of Samuel Taylor (stenographer)

Samuel Taylor (1748/49 – 1811) was the British inventor of a widely used system of

stenography Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek ''ste ...

. He began working on his own method of stenography in 1773, based on earlier efforts. In 1786, he published ''An Essay Intended to Establish a Standard for an Universal System of Stenography, or Short Hand Writing...'', the first shorthand system to be used all over the English-speaking world. His stenographic method consisted in cutting out the superfluous consonants as well as the vowels in polysyllabic words. It used an alphabet composed of 19 letters of simplified shapes. He taught stenography at Oxford as well as the universities of Scotland and Ireland for many years. His system was adopted for several other languages, including French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Swedish.Melin, 175-176. His book was translated and published in France by

Théodore-Pierre Bertin Théodore-Pierre Bertin (2 November 1751 – 25 January 1819) was the author of fifty-odd works on various subjects, but is primarily remembered as the person responsible for adapting Samuel Taylor's shorthand to the French language and introd ...

in 1792 under the title ''Système universel et complet de Stenographie ou Manière abrégée d'écrire applicable à tous les idiomes''. He also published a book on angling in 1800, titled ''Angling in All Its Branches''.

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References

* Butler, E. H. ''The Story of British Shorthand''. Lontoo: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1951. * Melin, Olof Werling. ''Stenografiens historia''. 1. osa. Tukholma: Nordiska Bokhandeln, 1927. :''This article is based on a translation of the corresponding article from the French Wikipedia and the Finnish Wikipedia.'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Samuel 1748 births 1811 deaths Creators of writing systems

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