CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
According to American Encyclopedia International (1956:356), “shorthand has come a long way from the days when dictation was taken by making signs on clay tablets or stones. Greeks and Egyptians used shorthand in speed writing contents, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries John Robert Cregy Published shorthand boot light Inc phonograph (1888) and sir Isaac Pitman (1837) together with other inventors of shorthand books, brought about the recognition of shorthand all over the world. As human beings tend towards civilization, the need for effective communication cannot be over emphasized, communicating with one another has been found to make the world move round communication as Herbert (1976 :53) said is the act of transferring meaning or knowledge from one persons to another, (the link, 1992). All human organizations live by communication. Without communication no organization can exist or survive for it, it is the tool of management and co-ordination. It is almost a general consensus that the various changes in technological advancement in form of recording, writing and processing can only complement the duty of a confidential secretary in matters of urgency and acute necessity. It does not follow that these media per se can fully substitute the work of confidential secretaries hence the drive for shorthand writers, typists and secretaries in all aspects of business world.
Shorthand is the art of writing rapidly and legibly by means of characters or signs in place of the conventional letters or worlds. The oxford English Mini Dictionary (1995) defines shorthand as “a method of writing rapidly with quickly made symbols”. It is said that shorthand is one of the cornerstone subjects of business education system of shorthand, were based on the alphabetical spelling of words, in contemporary shorthand, which are generally phonetic and based on speech, sounds, dateline circles, dashes and other easy way to write characters for recording sounds, syllabus and phrases frequently used. There are many inventors of shorthand namely Sir Isaac Pitman, Thomas Allen, Emily D. Smith (B. Sc) to mention but few.
Sir Isaac Pitman invented the art of representing spoken sound phonographic in 1837. Isaac Pitman found out that letters could be written faster in shorthand than in longhand, the purpose of pitman shorthand is the most widely used international system today because the pitman’s involves a lot of memory load in its mastery, a modified system known as the pitman 2000 shorthand is gradually being adopted by most colleges of education and other tertiary institutions at present to make shorthand much easier and enjoyable to master and apply. Thus Emily D. Smith (B Sc) Economics and holder of the unparalleled speed of 250 words per minute also contributed her quote to the development of shorthand writing.