Shorthand Stenography Online Course Chapter 11 “Size of Strokes ”

Size of Strokes 

The size or length of the stroke should be approx. 5 mm as shown in the table. Remember that while practicing the consonants you should be very careful about the accuracy and uniformity of the size of the stroke. If the size of the stroke varies, it may put you in a great difficulty later on, when the size of the stroke is reduced to its half and doubled length. Therefore you are advised to write the strokes with great accuracy, neatness and uniformity in size. A stroke is written with one impression, no correction is done afterwards. In case you have formed a wrong outline, cross it and write again.

Thinness / Thickness of the Strokes 

For shorthand writing you should use a shorthand pen with flexible nib. If it is not possible you may use a pencil specially made for shorthand writing. The pencil should be sharply pointed and lightly held in the fingers of the writer.

The heavy/thick strokes should be written with your normal pressure of writing and the light/thin strokes be written with light touch/pressure. You might have observed in the consonant table that -P T CH F tH S Sh K M N L R W Y & H are the light strokes and B D J V TH Z ZH G & NG are the heavy strokes.

Now you may identify that the consonants which are lightly pronounced are written by thin/light strokes and the consonants which are pronounced with a heavy sound are represented by thick/heavy strokes.

You can now start your practice of shorthand observing all the instructions imparted to you in this lesson. Be sure that your shorthand pencil is sharply pointed, and you have a proper shorthand note-book/ copy.

Exercise 1
Practice each consonant of the consonant table given earlier in this lesson. Write two pages for each consonant and name aloud each shorthand stroke as you write it. The strokes must always be called by their phonetic names.