"Stenoscribbles" - stenography vs sloppy handwriting
This is a half-completed thought at the moment.
Basically, I’ve come to terms with the incredibly sloppy handwriting I use in my notebooks by thinking of it as a sort of personal shorthand.
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 stenos (narrow) and graphein (to write). It has also been called brachygraphy, from Greek brachys (short), and tachygraphy, from Greek tachys (swift, speedy), depending on whether compression or speed of writing is the goal.
Given the above, clearly what I do is tachygraphy, since I tend to scribble out whole words (no space is saved).
I’ve realized that what I’m writing is the shape of the word. And if I get back to it soon enough, I can easily read the note because I pretty much already know what it says, I just need a reminder.
TODO: images will be very helpful - image of my handwriting as I speed up, outlining the shapes of words
brief comparison of shorthand systems
the value of abbreviations vs just big old sloppily-written words