Dutton Speedwords

Dutton Speedwords is a shorthand writing system. It’s also known by the name rapmotz.

Dutton Speedwords, transcribed in Speedwords as Dutton Motez, is an international auxiliary language as well as an abbreviated writing system using the English alphabet for all the languages of the world. It was devised by Reginald J. G. Dutton (1886–1970) who initially ran a shorthand college promoting Dutton Shorthand (a geometric script), then offered a mail order (correspondence) self-education course in Speedwords while still supporting the Dutton Shorthand. The business was continued by his daughter Elizabeth after his death.

Requirements for Communication

Any transcription, note taking or correspondence system must fulfill six requirements (Oliver, 2019, Micro-intellectual capital: A case study of Dutton Speedwords):

1. Rules for ensuring an agreed vocabulary, how additions are included, and, how technical terms are expressed
2. Systematic method for representing the vocabulary including abbreviations or contractions or truncations, particularly where literal transcription is necessary
3. A pronunciation system that makes the vocalisation meaningful
4. A meaningful word order
5. Rule for designating or rejecting parts of speech
6. A method for learning the new system of communication

Ideally, these requirements should not be wholly biased toward English but consider European, Asian and Middle East languages.

The system of Speedwords created over 50 years by Dutton addresses all these requirements. Other systems have copied the solutions devised by Dutton without greatly improving his approach. One major advantage of Dutton’s Speedwords is that it is readily available to everyone. Its current competitors either require pre-payment for materials before revealing the full details of their system, or, have system that is a subset of the words necessary for a complete system.

Objectives of Speedwords

Over time, three objectives were claimed by Dutton for Speedwords:

Initially, Dutton proposed Speedwords as an International Auxiliary Language (often abbreviated IAL) to encourage people to communicate internationally. Dutton wanted to provide a system that a sender could use which did not require them to learn the (foreign) language used by the recipient before establishing communication. Speedwords achieves this by relying on a deliberately small vocabulary. For international communication, the writer and reader are different, so, it is important that communication is unambiguous.

Then Dutton promoted Speedwords for high-speed writing. This used ideas and experience based on Dutton Shorthand. Dutton developed this stenographic method between 1919 and 1926. This approach also assumed that the writer and reader were different.

Up to this time, Speedwords avoided synonyms. Synonyms are variants of the same English word and treated them as equivalent. There are two possibilities: (1) One Speedword for different parts of speech. For example, ‘hon’ refers to sincere, sincerely, sincerity. (2) The same Speedword covers several different English words (e.g., ‘kla’ means class, kind, or sort. There are also derivatives of Speedwords (e.g., ‘bi’ means life but there is also ‘bie’ lively, ‘bik’ vital, ‘bir’ creature, ‘biu’ welfare, ‘biv’ spirit, ‘bix’ death, ‘bixk’ fatal, ‘bixy’ kill, ‘bixya’ murder.

Later, realising that some writing required literal transcription, Dutton expanded the vocabulary to allow words which are synonyms that were required to precisely distinguish shades of meaning. Dutton offered two methods to distinguish these synonyms which were required for literal transcription. The first was to use an initial capital letter. The capital letter indicates the Speedword is being used to denote a specific word not the range of words covered by a Speedword. These were officially recognised by being listed in the Speedwords Dictionary. The second method was to underline the Speedword. Dutton does not detail how this would work so it is assumed that this was left to the discretion of the Speedwords user.

Finally, Dutton promoted Speedwords for individual (personal) note writing and note reading. This approach assumed that the writer and reader were mostly the same person. Dutton encouraged this group of users to adopt some personal conventions to adapt it to their personal needs (e.g., underlining). The widely available “Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords” ISBN 978-0340055649 (original 1951 edition and revised 1971 edition, but paragraph 4 in both editions) was focused on the note-taking and note-making objective although Dutton still claimed it could also be used to fulfill the other objectives.

See § Design of Speedwords below for how these objectives were used to construct Speedwords.

Dutton Speedwords Usage

There are three possible uses: writing, speaking including dictation, and, note taking.

Writing

This was the original use intended by Dutton. Speedwords would allow peoples with different national languages to communicate using Speedwords as the medium. This would be accomplished because it had a compact vocabulary and rigid meanings to avoid ambiguity. All versions of Speedwords were customised for writing and minimising the number of letters that had to be written.

Speaking including dictation

Criticisms in 1935-6 of the predecessor of Speedwords (called International 2 Letter Script which had many combinations of consonants) were focused on the difficulty in pronouncing strings of consonants. Speedwords overcame this deficiency.

Note taking

“Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords” adapted Speedwords to note taking. It modified the standard Speedwords from written correspondence without any time pressure to allow taking notes at high speed.

Competitors to Speedwords

There are three competitors to Speedwords. They are (1) shorthand as simplified letterforms, (2) shorthand as picture symbols, and (3) shorthand using non-stenographic systems (that is, alphabetic characters).

Simplified letterforms are also called stenographic shorthand systems. One type of letterform geometric is based on circles, parts of circles, and straight lines placed strictly horizontally, vertically or diagonally. The most popular example is Pitman shorthand released 1837, and many lesser-known systems such as Boyd’s syllabic shorthand originally published 1903, as well as predecessor systems such as Duployan Shorthand. These use symbols which do not represent letters, but rather sounds so the words are written more or less as they are spoken. Contrasted with geometric are script shorthands that are oriented around the movement of the hand when writing. The original is Gabelsberger shorthand which began in Germany and spread through Europe. Script-geometric, or semi-script, shorthands are a hybrid of geometric systems and the script systems. The notable example is Gregg shorthand first published in 1888. Other examples include Superwrite, Easyscript, Keyscript, Speedwriting, Quickscript, Breviogrph, Stenoscript ABC, and Teeline.

Picture symbols were proposed by Austrian Charles K. Bliss (1897–1985) who created Blissymbolics in 1949 as a universal written language for speakers of any language to learn and communicate. It avoided the problems of constructed quasi-European language like Esperanto, or, natural languages such as English. Blissymbolics was conceived as a purely visual, speech-less language but provided a basic vocabulary that could be spoken.

Non-stenographic systems or alphabetic systems may also supplement the alphabetic characters by using punctuation marks as additional characters, give different meanings when letters are capitalised, or add non-alphabetic symbols. The most popular of these is Esperanto. Dutton contrasted Speedwords with its major rival Esperanto by claiming correctly that Speedwords had a smaller vocabulary and did not require the extensive study that was required to converse or write Esperanto. Another rapid writing system with a similar name, Speedwriting (also called Brief English Systems), was invented by Emma Dearborn at Simmons College, Columbia University and published in 1925. Her method used letters of the alphabet and some punctuation marks to represent the sounds of English which could be reproduced on the typewriter. Dearborn initially franchised teaching and then sold the rights which passed between various companies who made further changes and marketed it throughout the US and in various languages (e.g., Spanish). Other methods included Personal Shorthand also known as Briefscript, and Keyscript. Forkner Shorthand was promoted as an alternative to Pitman shorthand from 1955–1995 but is no longer taught.

The benchmark for pronunciation is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) produced by the International Phonetic Association. It is easily printable by hand or keyboard although its conventions are often not used to depict pronunciation in dictionaries and other reference materials.

The major reason that Dutton Speedwords continues to receive attention is its strict alphabetical constraint that allows it to be used on a keyboard, and the breadth of practical application which Dutton embodied in his system.

Design of Speedwords

The design of Speedwords has four features:

1. Unlike other shorthand methods, (e.g., Pitman, Gregg) which use new symbols, strokes or geometric shapes, Speedwords method uses the 26 letters of the English alphabet (upper and lower case) plus the ampersand symbol (’&’).
2. Unlike most other shorthand and rapid writing methods, Speedwords has its roots in a shorthand system that Dutton found cumbersome and which he believed he overcame by using alphabetic characters.
3. Unlike other shorthand and rapid writing systems, Dutton emphasised the speed of learning.
4. Like other shorthand systems, Dutton sought to maximise speed and minimise the amount of writing.

Principles of Speedwords

In all publications, Dutton describes various principles of Speedwords but there is no consolidated list of principles. They can be summarised as:

1. Select its vocabulary from the entire Indo-European language family, particularly maximising the internationality of words, that is, selecting a word that is common between languages, (Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords, 1951, page 90).
2. Abbreviate those words guided by a 1925 analysis by Horn on the frequency of words. The most frequently used words were allocated the shorted abbreviation. So the most frequent words have just one letter (Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords, 1951, page 5).
3. Structure the vocabulary around high frequency words. A 1,000 word vocabulary handles 85% of daily conversation while a 3,000 word vocabulary handles 98% of daily conversation so Speedwords only needs a simple rule for 2% of its vocabulary. Dutton seems to suggest that the solution is to write out the word in full.
4. Make one Speedword have only one meaning which results in a basic vocabulary which Dutton calls ‘keywords’ (Speedwords Dictionary, 1945, page 7).
5. Avoid grammatical differences, so a keyword can also refer to noun, verb, adjective, adverb (Speedwords Dictionary, 1945, page 5).
6. Create other meanings by adding suffixes to show relationships or create antonyms (Speedwords Dictionary, 1945, page 3).

While this approach is sound it has both advantages and a few disadvantages discussed below.

Speedwords was meant to be written and spoken, so Dutton provided some guidelines on pronunciation which is included below.

Advantages of Dutton Speedwords

In Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords, Dutton claims at least eight benefits from Speedwords:

1. Knowing just a few Speedwords (he means the one letter Speedwords) allows immediate savings in time and effort (Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords 1951, page 7). The words can be substituted for the English equivalents as the Speedwords vocabulary is learnt. This contrasts with geometric shorthand shapes that require the entire system to be mastered.
2. It uses the English alphabet. This means it Speedwords can be written or typed (TYDS, page 8).
3. It uses a range of Indo-European words. So, its vocabulary has an “international currency” (page 87).
4. Speedwords are chosen based on the frequency of usage. This means that the most frequently used words are the shortest (TYDS, page 7).
5. Correspondence can be exchanged although the individual writers without having to learn the foreign language of all their many correspondents. This means the writers can be ignorant of the language of their correspondent (TYDS, page 8).
6. Knowing speed words takes between 20 and 30 hours (TYDS, pages 9, 90). The work of learning “is a fascinating pastime and in no sense an arduous task” (TYDS, page 9)
7. Speedwords makes 5 out of 6 words far shorter (page 87). This increases the speed of writing and note taking approximately 100-120 words per minute (page 137) or up to 150 wpm (page 8).
8. The ‘hurdle’ to overcome language barriers is considerably reduced because the Speedwords vocabulary is small. The basic vocabulary is 493 words (page 89). The more extensive vocabulary is 1,000 words (page 142)

Disadvantages of Dutton Speedwords

The disadvantages appear to be:

1. No-one is developing Speedwords. So authoritative information about it is now hard to find, except for the Teach yourself Dutton Speedwords book. Some have taken Speedwords and adapted it. For example, see Briefscript by Ray Brown.
2. The Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords book does not have a full discussion of pronunciation. Dutton suggests is essential to using Speedwords. Hearsay is that Dutton had a simplified pronunciation system which may have been shared with some inquirers after his death, but it was never published
3. Dutton did not disclose the rules he used to formulate Speedwords. So there are several apparent anomalies and obscurities. Also, Dutton appears to make arbitrary decisions on the choice of a Speedword. For example, on page 25 Dutton states that ‘ao’ means ‘away’ although ‘ax’ would be logical. However, ‘ax’ has already been used to mean ‘ask’. This shows that over 50 years Dutton had not reached 100% perfection of his system. This is consistent with the effort required to be expended to fully complete as shown by the Pareto Principle. Also, on TYDS, page 25 Dutton used the Speedword ‘dy’ for since but gives the rationale French ‘depuis’ but it does not contain ‘y’ and in French could also translate to ‘for’ which already has the Speedword ‘f’.
4. Some guidelines stated in Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords book are difficult to apply. For example, Dutton allows the reader to use synonyms for the basic Speedwords and distinguishes them from the basic speedwords by capitalising their first letter. Also, for example, English ‘at’ becomes the Speedword ‘A’ because Speedword ‘a’ means ‘to’ (TYDS, page72).
5. Dutton says the reader can create her or his own supplementary list but does not detail how this is done or how she or he manages it.

None of these disadvantages prevent its successful use for personal note taking.

Achievements of Dutton

Dutton Speedwords continues to be used to despite its orphan status because of his useful qualities:

1. Dutton kept the vocabulary compact. This was achieved by using frequency of use as the criterion.
2. Dutton provided a proven learning approach which makes it easy to master. He emphasised incremental learning with repetition.
3. Dutton persevered with it over a long period. During the period 1933–1970 (until his death) it was refined with his personal experience and feedback from adopters and students.

Evolution of Speedwords

It appears that Speedwords developed in five main stages:

1. As a competitor to Pitman and Gregg shorthand. Based on the available Dutton shorthand publications held in libraries this occurred 1919–1925. At this point, it was a geometric shorthand method that competed with Pitman and Gregg shorthand methods and did not use the English alphabet.
2. Under the influence of Horn’s frequently used words list, an early attempt was made to develop an alternate international abbreviated language. Dutton expressed this in his one-page sheet called International 2-letter correspondence symbols (published 1933).
3. Further development occurred to create an alternate international language. It began in 1935 when International 2-letter correspondence symbols were revised and reissued in 1935 as International Symbolic Script. Another version called Word Speedwords was published between 1941–1945 (page 18 of Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords). There is a booklet of the same name published in 1946 which appears to contain 100 Speedwords. Despite attempts by Dutton to popularise World Speedwords it was not adopted as an international language. The intention expressed on page 88 in Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords (1951) to produce language-specific versions of the Speedwords course, did not eventuate. It appears another variation called Dutton Youth Speedwords was published in 1943. Both World Speedwords and Speedwords used words from Flemish (Dutch), French, German, Greek, Latin, Portuguese, Scandinavia, Slav, and Spanish are sources for both World Speedwords and Speedwords (According to pages 8, and 88 of Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords, 1951 and 1971).
4. By 1946 it had been renamed Speedwords. By 1951 Dutton conceded that Speedwords was ideal for individual note taking and note making (page 7 Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords) and made some variations to Word Speedwords to adapt it for the new purpose (page 8 Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords). His audience is, therefore, students and time-poor people seeking to make the best use of their time or people who incur high costs in communication. He comments that he hopes that “the student who has worked through the present course will look to this wide horizon (page 88) that is, international communication so Dutton always maintained his duality of objectives and functions.
5. It has been revived from time to time in its own right as well as with adaptations. The Dutton Society (no longer extant) promoted Speedwords. Some time management writers and computer specialists who describe online applications including e-mail and situations where communication is either slow or expensive.

Links

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