Abstract
He doesn't have a press label in his hatband, but you can tell he's a journalist from the spiral notebook and the strange squiggles he's feverishly scribbling. He was a familiar figure in English black and white movies, one ear cocked for the heroine's story on the steps of the courthouse. Dramatic, and genuine, because the hack has shorthand. Not any more. These days, the reporter is more likely to be thrusting a mini-recorder or a smartphone under the noses of the great and not-so-good. In this, the 50th anniversary year of the adoption of Teeline, who does shorthand? Is the more complex script Pitman dead? And who cares anyway?
Piers Morgan does, for one. He was taught Teeline by the legendary June Beavers at Harlow College on his NCTJ course. “It has always stood me in very good stead… Having an ability to take a fast, contemporaneous note as a backup to technology is invaluable,” he told the National Council for the Training of Journalists. “I still use Teeline on Good Morning Britain during a big breaking news story live on air when I want to make a note of a powerful quote and repeat it very soon afterwards.” His tweeted tabloid advice to trainee journalists is shorter, and racier: “Work hard, play hard and do your Teeline!”
The system was invented by James Hill, a schoolteacher born near Bradford in 1908 who qualified as a teacher of Pitman at the age of 21. But he looked for something simpler than this Victorian tool of commerce, and came up with something that even journalists could master. Hill began developing a more straightforward form of note-taking as early as 1939, but it was not until much later that his experiment bore fruit in classes to journalism trainees.
Instead of a whole new vocabulary of outlines that convey the sounds of words, Teeline is a spelling-based system using basic letters. It streamlines note-taking by removing unnecessary letters from words, making the letters faster to write. Vowels are often removed and silent letters stripped out altogether. For instance, the letter X on its own can denote “emergency”. And S on its own stands for the suffix -shall or -cial.
The speed with which the system can be mastered soon commended it to the scribbler's trade and in 1968 it became a requirement to reach 100 wpm to qualify for the NCTJ diploma. It is mainly used in the English-speaking world, but can be adapted for use in Germanic languages such as German or Swedish. Teeline's key advantage over Pitman is its simplicity, enabling Alastair Campbell to come top of his class while learning it. He also used it to compile his diaries while acting as press secretary to the then prime minister Tony Blair, which may account for their prolixity, being swift and easy to write.
Despite being a requirement for an NCTJ diploma, shorthand -particularly Pitman - is declining in use. There are also fewer teachers around. I learned Pitman from the formidable Miss Teague in Brighton while serving as a graduate trainee on the Evening Argus in 1966. I paid £1 an hour each week (from wages of £14) to learn the theory. The editor Victor Gorringe, who didn't want me on the paper (I was foisted on him by the Westminster Press Group trainee manager), warned me that I could be sacked if I failed to reach 100 wpm.
It was some time before I grasped the principle of Pitman, that I was writing sounds not words. But once the penny dropped, I got quite enthusiastic, moving to a night school in Hove for speed classes to reach the dizzy heights of 120 wpm. I even bought the Pitman's Weekly. Little swot, I was also motivated by a powerful urge to prove pin-stripe Gorringe wrong.
Shorthand stood me in even better stead than Piers Morgan's Teeline. I submitted to a live test in the Commons for the Press Association parliamentary press gallery, taking a note during prime minister's questions of Harold Wilson, who could rattle along at 180 wpm in flat Yorkshire vowels. Cyril Arthur, the PA editor, took me to an office where the clatter of typewriters was worse than the din of Raleigh's bicycle factory and bade me write three stories. “Doesn't matter if you don't get the name of every MP right,” he offered, as I remember, through a fog of pipe smoke. I passed the test, and the PA offered me the job, but at £1,200 - a year, not a month - I preferred a better offer to join the Manchester Evening News office in Fleet Street, my ultimate objective.
We all have our shorthand story. Piers Morgan again: “Tape recorders are great until they don't work, as I once discovered when I interviewed Rod Stewart for an hour and later could only hear my voice.” He should have opened his notebook as backup. I was summoned to the shadow chancellor Gordon Brown in 1997 when he wanted to give The Independent on Sunday an exclusive about his plan to introduce a 10p rate of income tax when in government.
I was there merely in the capacity of an amanuensis, to the IoS political editor Stephen Castle, who had a state-of-the-art tape recorder, one with those miniature reels. He taped every word. I was on autopilot-Pitman, having just had lunch with Brown's thirsty spin doctor, Charlie Whelan. But when Stephen confidently played the tape back, not a sound there came. My shorthand was cut-glass perfect. Not that it mattered, because as so often Brown didn't stick to the script and hadn't actually uttered the words “10p tax”. Charlie and I had to make it up in the pub afterwards.
So there are limits to the efficacy of any shorthand. But nobody can take away the nostalgic memories of standing in a phone box, dictating a story straight from your shorthand notebook to a copytaker asking “is there much more of this?”. Yes, there was. Years of it, and it's still in daily use.