MAKE A NOTE OF THIS

Have you ever seen shorthand? As far as I can make out, it's just a load of spots and dashes hovering at different levels between the lines on the page. And yet, apparently this is enough to convey all the words in the English language. And, the clincher, it's incredibly quick to write. People can take dictation using shorthand at something like the speed of light. You see secretaries telling their bosses to stop thinking about it and just say something. They're raring to go with writing out "War and Peace" there.

So, if it's so quick to write in shorthand, why aren’t we taught it at school? Really, why aren’t we all using it? Frankly, isn’t it time we ditched this longhand English language thing we're persisting with using and made the switch over to shorthand? They could start printing books in shorthand and we'd effectively get another few hours in the day. Commuter trains would be full of people knocking back two or three books between stations. Occasionally, the readers would look up and laugh at the people texting each other with their slow "What R U doing?" nonsense.