
Take Note
A Nimble History of Shorthand
Andrew Hill(Author)
Profile Books Ltd (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 5. November 2026
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-1-80522-617-8 (ISBN)
Description
Cicero's scribe invented it. Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens and even Astrid Lindgren used it. Rivalries, adulteries and actual martyrdoms arose from it. Spycraft was reliant on it, courtroom dramas were changed by it, and feminism has an uneasy debt to it. But today, its continuing existence is at risk. So, what exactly is shorthand? What has it given us? And what would we lose if this world-changing technology disappeared?
Andrew Hill follows the story from the scribes of Ancient Rome to today's takeover of AI, revealing how a system of symbols invented to speedily transcribe speech shaped the modern world and can still offer a valuable way to record, store and recall our brightest ideas today.
More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-80522-617-8 (9781805226178)
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Andrew Hill is an award-winning journalist, writer and public speaker. A senior writer at the Financial Times, he is the author of Leadership in the Headlines and prize-winning Ruskinland. Over a thirty-year career, Andrew has used shorthand to report from around the world; his top speed was once an impressive 130 words per minute.