The chapter treating of Proof-Reading will doubtless be acceptable to all who have occasion to correct the press. This chapter and the Table of Common Abbreviations make this treatise a complete work of reference in respect of all the more general contractions employed in the language. Contractions for each special class of subjects may be devised, to any desirable extent, in accordance with the principles specified in the chapter entitled General Principles of Contraction. The remarks concerning the abbreviation of the forms of letters will be found to contain suggestions which may be acted upon, with great advantage, in the uncontracted style of writing. That this work may conspire with other causes in giving the human race opportunities for Spiritual Culture, and for the attainment of that rare, but desirable, Spiritual Freedom so beautifully described in the remarks quoted in this work from the writings of the noble and sweetminded Channing, is the earnest prayer of PHONETIC DEPOT, NEW YORK, June, 1857 THE AUTHOR. Contractions, Common, Table of... Contractions, General Principles of.. Contractions, Special....... Donatello's Statue of St. George Common Abbreviations, Table of. Common Placing, Directions for Composition, How to Acquire Ease and Correctness in. Contractions for Theological Writers.. 50 41 14 50 49 22 49 ... 25 How to Acquire Ease and Correctness in Composition... Index Rerum, How to Keep an Woman, Fortitude of, under Reverses of Fortune.......... INTRODUCTION. "Who that is much in the habit of writing, has not often wished for some means of expressing by two or three dashes of the pen, that which, as things are, it requires such an expenditure of time and labor to commit to paper? Our present mode of communication must be felt to be cumbersome in the last degree, unworthy of these days of invention. We require some means of bringing the operations of the mind, and of the hand, into closer correspondence."-English Review. THE system of phonetic shorthand furnishes the means of bringing the operations of the hand into complete correspondence with the most rapid operations of the mind in composition; and it is to be hoped that the same laws of economy which have given the world the blessings of the railroad, telegraph, steam printing presses, and various other time and labor savers, will in due season confer upon the literary and commercial world the numerous advantages of phonetic shorthand or phonography. Let the public be made fully aware of the benefits of this system as a time and labor saver in writing, as a facility in attaining an education, as an assistance in acquiring a beautifully accurate pronunciation of the English language and in overcoming the various defects of articulation, and as a means of pecuniary success for thousands of young men and women who thoroughly acquire it, and ere long it will be made a branch of study in all our schools, or, in this case, the same motives and reasons will not prevail which constantly induce progress in every other respect. As compared with phonography, the present mode of writing results in the waste of four fifths of the vast amount of time and labor devoted to its use. Give the thought and energy wasted by the common longhand the time that would be saved by the use of phonetic shorthand, and the world would receive for its investment a rich reward in the way of thought embodied in books and all kinds of inventions. In the mean time each one who can, from other immediate demands upon his attention, afford the necessary time for the acquisition of phonography, will find himself involuntarily assisting in the prevalence of that art by the praises h will be compelled to give it for the benefits it will bestow upon him in numerous ways. Those who can not afford so great an advantage, should not fail to do the next best thing-learn brief longhand. IRKSOMENESS OF LONGHAND. Nothing can be more unnecessary than to dilate upon the tediousness of the unabbreviated longhand writing. That it is exceedingly irksome As one of the firmest kind of convictions of every writer who has used it to any considerable extent. That its cumbersomeness shouldve led to the devising of numerous systems of shorthand affords no ground for astonishment; neither can it surprise the initiated that it has led to the extensive practice of sleights of (long) hand which are oftentimes wholly incomprehensible even by those who impose them upon the public. It is only surprising that, inasmuch as most longhand writers resort to various devices to save labor, some one should not sooner have offered the public a practical system of contractions and expedients, which would make a saving possible where it is most needed, and enable the economy of contraction to be availed of to a much larger extent than heretofore by securing uniformity of practice. ORIGIN OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM OF BRIEF LONGHAND. The present essay at a practical system of abbreviated longhand is due to the fact that the Author, during a long course of reporting, has used the common longhand to an enormous extent in cases where a great amount of life-exhausting labor might have been saved, could he have employed a series of contractions, such as he now presents. That his method is practical he confidently trusts, because it is devised with strict reference to the principles which have been thoroughly approved by extensive practice in the system of phonetic shorthand which he has employed in his profession of reporting; and because the system has undergone the test of several months' use, with a determination on the part of the Author to seek out and remove every discoverable defect. The motives which induced him to publish the present treatise were stated in Vol. I. of the Phonographic Intelligencer, from which the following paragraph is extracted: Acting upon St. Paul's plan of being as a Jew to the Jews, as a Roman to the Romans-of being all things to all men in order to save some; while to phonographers we become as a phonographer, in order to gain those who are under phonetic law, we have been preparing to become as a Roman to the Romans-those without the knowledge of phonetics-in order that we may gain them also. While we have prepared the Hand-Book of Standard Phonography for phonographers and those who, when apprised of the benefits of phonography, are willing to andertake the requisite labor for its acquisition, we have been devising a system of longhand contractions and expedients for the use of those who are not aware of the advantages of phonography, or who, from want |