Clickable dictation at various speeds is available at the bottom of this page. The transcript of the dictation appears here as well.
We continue with the review book: ""The ten letters in this booklet contain all the brief forms and other contractions in Gregg Shorthand as well as 400 of the most common words employing analogical word beginnings and word endings. Note that this is THE last letter of the series!
"Because of their high shorthand content value, these letters may be used again and again as repetition practice until students can write them at a rapid rate of speed."
This was published during the height of the Anniversary edition of Gregg. The memory load of this version of Gregg was heavy. There were hundreds of brief forms, tons of special forms, the abbreviating principle was applied to more words than you can shake a stick at, and then there were scores of word beginning and word endings, both joined and disjoined. Some of you may find the vocabularly a bit rich but it's well worth that repetion practice mentioned above. Hang in there!
Remember, the dictation pieces must be a minimum of three minutes to be a valid test. Anything under three minutes is therefore not acceptable for testing purposes. Keep in mind that before Diamond Jubilee Gregg, all shorthand tests were five minutes. If you go back far enough, tests were ten minutes or longer.
Gregg Shorthand Review Letters, The Gregg Publishing Company, 1940, Letter 10
Dear Sir: A large part of the population of Danville reads good books every evening. Many of the books read are bought or borrowed from Perry’s, the book store located in your vicinity.
Everyone agrees that many a self-educated man has been the product of extended reading in the arts and sciences. The self-satisfied person, the one who has declined to enter the paradise of fine books, who has refused to reclaim his boyhood adventures into the land of knowledge, is the person who knows the humility of retreat when in the company of well-read people.
No one need suffer such an indignity today. Danville’s book store is calling for new members to join its Evening Hour Brotherhood, the club that selects and reads the finest books every year. Among book shops, we are pilgrims in this reading club plan. Hundreds of town folks with an uncontrollable lust of knowledge have joined our happy club in the past year. This includes many celebrities. They know the supreme satisfaction that is a just reward for the hours they spend in reading. Won’t you seriously consider joining our brotherhood?
Among the newest publications are a number of books by eminent psychologists and biographers that have been hailed by critics. There is a dramatic novel whose authorship is being kept secret. This, by the way, is as near a model of grammatical perfection as we have seen. The publishers of the books have promised to distribute free of charge copies of a specially autographed edition to the first hundred people who can name the author.
We have accumulated a complete library even to the latest literary works on geology and biology and this week we expect a new and unique geography of the United States. If you are politically minded, you will want to look over our shelf of books on politics.
In the way of supplemental literature, we publish every week a four-page journal containing paragraph extracts of leading news periodicals that we have read critically. If the extracts are from foreign magazines, they are translated. This journal is mailed every week, postage paid, to all the members of the Evening Hour Brotherhood. We don’t have to be apologetic about the legibility of this seemingly small journal, because it is set in type, just like a regular newspaper. We speak knowingly when we say you will derive much enjoyment from its contents in the serenity of your home.
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Instructions for Self-Dictation Practice:
Copy and paste the above article into a word-processing document, using double or triple spacing and 12- or 14-pitch type.
As always, be sure to check your shorthand dictionary for correct outlines before "drilling"!
Dictation Practice:
Note that the material was counted and recorded for dictation at 100; all other speeds were copied from the 100 take and electronically adjusted and may therefore sound unusual.
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