One especially fertile approach to abbreviation in Gregg is the use of single letters as stand-ins for common prefixes or suffixes, depending on whether they’re written before or after the words they modify. As prefixes, these letters can be either attached to or detached from the word. For example, a detached “g,” written just before and above a word represents “grand,” as in “grandmother,” but also as in “grandiloquent,” or even “granular” (which can be written “g” above “l-r.”)

On the other hand, an attached “k” at the beginning of a word can be the prefixes “con,” “com,” or “count;” so “k-g” is pronounced “cong,” and is the short form for Congress. But a detached “k” written above a word is the prefix “counter” or “contra”; so “k” written over a “b”, for example, is read “contrib” and is the short form for “contribute” or “contribution.”

It’s much the same with suffixes. A detached “g” at the end of a word stands for “gram,” as in “program.” A detached “k” stands for “ical,” as in “medical.” And a detached “o” takes the place of “ology,” as in “biology.”

These forms can also be added together to create longer words. “Biological” is written “b-i” followed by a detached “o-k.” In this way, long, complex words are reduced to two or three quick flicks of the pen, and yet remain completely legible to anyone who knows the Gregg system. Combined, the brief forms and the abbreviation principle account for about half of Gregg’s advantage over longhand. Not only are the letters uncomplicated and simply joined, there are fewer of them to write.

The final element that makes Gregg so blazingly fast is a technique called “phrasing.” Using this method, many common expressions can be dashed off in a few strokes without ever lifting the pen from the page. For example, the phrase “it will be” is composed of three common words, each of which can be written separately with a single letter: “i,” written with a short, straight, upward stroke that slopes to the right, represents “it;” “l,” a long, horizontal, upward-facing curve, represents “will;” and, as we’ve seen, “b,” the long, downward curving stroke, represents “be.” Phrasing allows you to join all three of these letters in one elegant, continuous form—“i-l-b”—that takes less than a quarter-second to write.

Here's "it will be" on the first line, with "I have been" below it:

Dennis Hollier

And there are literally thousands of these phrases in Gregg shorthand. Most importantly, unlike short forms, they don’t require much memorization; they’re the product of a few simple rules.

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There you have it: a short course in the technology that made the Irishman John Robert Gregg an American tycoon in the first half of the 20th Century. By the time he died, in 1949, Gregg presided over an empire that reached from his headquarters on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan into almost every school, business and courthouse in the country. While he was fundamentally a publishing magnate—Gregg Publishing put out hundreds of textbooks, dictionaries, study guides, magazines, and shorthand versions of classical literature—John Robert Gregg also oversaw a national infrastructure of certification agencies, business schools, and testing facilities that endorsed the skills of all professional shorthand writers. If you wanted to be an executive secretary, you needed a certificate from Gregg saying you qualified at 150 words per minute. If you wanted to be a court reporter, you had to demonstrate you could write an astonishing 225 words per minute with better than 98 percent accuracy. Altogether, millions of people passed through Gregg training and the Gregg certification system.