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New system of shorthand takes off

By Our Staff Reporter

Walter Kistler (right), Chairman, The Steno Trust, gives away a rank certificate to a Newrite shorthand course student at the graduation day function of the Stenographer's Guild in Chennai on Tuesday. — Photo: K.V. Srinivasan

CHENNAI, APRIL 5. Watching the first batch of 19 students collect their certificates in `Newrite', a new system of shorthand, Walter Kistler saw his dream coming true.

It began taking shape last August, when Mr. Kistler, chairman of the Steno Trust in Washington and inventor of Newrite, chanced upon an article in the Wall Street Journal.

The article spoke about the honorary president of the Stenographers' Guild in Chennai, S.V. Ramaswamy's devotion to Isaac Pitman, the inventor of the most widely-used system of shorthand.

The story resonated in Mr. Kistler's mind. As one of the few remaining places in the world where stenography is still taught and used, India seemed the ideal starting point for Newrite.

The Steno Trust embarked on teaching the first batch of students at Stenographers' Guild in February. It paid each student a stipend of Rs. 3000 for the eight-week course.

Mr. Kistler himself learnt stenography in the 1930s when it was mandatory teaching in school. He went on create his own form of shorthand called `Steno' in the 1960s. The Steno Trust followed.

Speaking at the graduation event, N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu , said journalists had lost heavily in doing away with shorthand. He linked the decline of accuracy in reporting and newspapers of record directly to the inability among reporters to use shorthand. Digital voice recorders were no substitute for good shorthand skills, he said.

To make shorthand relevant once more, the Steno Trust plans to create a computer interface, starting with a keyboard with Newrite symbols. "We want to make it possible to input Newrite and get an output in English or vice versa," said Sesh Velamoor, director of the Future Foundation, an organisation set up by Mr. Kistler to consider the survival of the human race.

Four times faster than longhand and four times slower than Pitman's stenography, Mr. Kistler says `steno' was not specially suited for dictation. "But unlike with Pitman's stenography, you can read what you have written years later." Mr. Kistler, a dedicated diarist, has so far written 20 volumes of diaries in Newrite.

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