In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• "All the World Writes Short Hand":The Phenomenon of Shorthand in Seventeenth-Century England
• Kelly Minot McCay (bio)

Introduction

Overwise

[M]y Ancestor was the first Inventor of Short Hand, and you see of what use it is to the world; but at first it was extremely laugh'd at, as no doubt my Project will be.… Well in short, as all the World writes Short Hand, so I wou'd teach all the World to speak Short Hand, and by an Act of Parliament have it call'd the Short Hand Tongue.

Laton

Speak Short Hand, and have it call'd the Short Hand Tongue! Iack Adams for that; ha, ha, ha.

Omnes

Ha, ha, ha, ha.¹

It is a laughable suggestion, a spoken shorthand. Shorthand, as everyone in the audience of John Lacy's comedy, Hercules Buffoon (1684), would have been aware, is a system of writing, not speech, and was designed in part so that the pen could keep pace with the already-rapid pace of the tongue. The first person in the early modern period to devise such a system, whom Overwise claims as his relative, was Timothy Bright, whose publication of Characterie in 1588 was hardly "laugh'd at," but was instead the catalyst for a growing number of shorthand systems published throughout the seventeenth century and well into the twentieth—all of which remained firmly rooted in the written medium.² As for the statement that "all the World writes Short Hand," Overwise is a bit overzealous. And yet, while not everyone knew how to write in shorthand, everyone in the London audience was expected to know of shorthand. The premise of the joke, which goes on for 78 lines and constitutes the very climax of the comedy, depends on it. [End Page 1]

Scholars have given shorthand short shrift for over a century. The study of shorthand had its heyday in the 1880s, when thorough and reliable research was published alongside poppycock claims that held, for example, that shorthand systems of antiquity were the origin of lowercase letters.³ The bulk of shorthand scholarship was conducted by practitioners and, more dangerously, shorthand inventors, and their bias against seventeenth-century systems is palpable. Given the absence of a reliable history of shorthand, along with the meager regard granted to early modern systems in the unreliable histories that have been written, it is not surprising just how little is known about shorthand among early modern scholars today.⁴ This is an oversight well worth rectifying, for as I will contend, quite a lot was known about shorthand in the early modern period itself. There is ample evidence that between 1588 and 1700, when shorthand was still considered a recent invention, it represented a thriving method of writing in England and the American colonies. Only gradually, in the second half of the seventeenth century, did it spread beyond those anglophone areas to the Continent, and then never with the same clout and competition that characterized its growth in England.⁵ This evidence, however, remains to be set forth in a comprehensive way. The following work is meant to fill this unnoticed gap by presenting a concentrated synthesis of print sources, like Hercules Buffoon, that bear mention of shorthand—mentions that shed light on its use, its prevalence, its associations, and its place in puns, jokes, and metaphors—in order to demonstrate just how commonplace shorthand was. For to miss its mention or misinterpret its significance is to turn a blind eye to a cultural experience that impacted notions of privacy, accountability, abridgement, and communication itself.

Shorthand, also known by a variety of synonyms including characterie, brachygraphy, stenography, and tachygraphy, is an overarching term for a large set of writing systems that had as their main objective the qualities of swiftness, secrecy, spatial-efficiency, and (to a lesser extent) universality. They are not mere abbreviations of longhand, but are highly developed writing systems that operate according to their own rules and require their own literacy. As a result, works written in shorthand are illegible to the untrained eye. Individual studies have been done to decipher and publish the shorthand notes of individual writers...

中文翻译：

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“全世界写速记”：十七世纪英格兰的速记现象

代替摘要，这里是内容的简要摘录：

• “全世界写速记”：十七世纪英格兰的速记现象
• 凯利·米诺特·麦凯（生物）

介绍

Ø verwise

[M] y先祖是第一个“空手”发明者，您将了解它对世界的用途；但是起初，我非常被嘲笑，因为毫无疑问，我的计划将会是……。简而言之，因为世界上所有的人都写空手，所以我要教世界所有人说空手，并通过一项法令国会把它称为“简言之舌”。

大号航标

讲短手，并把它叫做短手舌！为此，艾克·亚当斯（Iack Adams）哈哈哈

Ø跨国公司

哈，哈，哈，哈。^1个

这是一个可笑的建议，一个速记的速记。约翰·莱西（John Lacy）的喜剧中的每个人，速记（Hercules Buffoon（1684））都应该意识到，它是一种书写系统，而不是语音系统，其设计目的是使钢笔可以跟上已经快节奏的步伐的舌头。在现代初期，Overwise宣称是他的亲戚的第一个设计这种系统的人是Timothy Bright，他在1588年出版的Characterie几乎没有被“嘲笑”，而是成为了越来越多的人的催化剂。速记系统在整个17世纪到20世纪一直出版，所有这些都牢固地植根于书面媒介中。^2个至于“全世界都写空手”的说法，Overwise有点过分热心。然而，虽然不是每个人都知道如何写速记，但伦敦听众中的每个人都应该知道速记。笑话的前提持续了78行，并构成了喜剧的最高潮。[结束页1]

学者们速记短短一个多世纪。速记法的研究处于1880年代的鼎盛时期，当时流行而可靠的研究与poppycock的主张一起发表，例如，主张古代的速记体系是小写字母的起源。³大量的速记奖学金是由从业者（更危险的是速记发明者）进行的，他们对17世纪制度的偏见是显而易见的。鉴于缺乏可靠的速记历史，以及在已撰写的不可靠的历史中对早期现代系统给予的微薄关注，今天的早期现代学者对速记知之甚少也就不足为奇了。⁴这是一个很值得纠正的监督，因为我将争辩说，在现代初期，人们对速记有很多了解。有足够的证据表明，在1588年至1700年之间，速记仍被认为是一项新发明，它代表了英格兰和美国殖民地的一种蓬勃发展的写作方法。直到17世纪下半叶，它才逐渐扩展到英语之外的地区，再到欧洲大陆，然后再没有像它在英格兰一样具有影响力的竞争和竞争。⁵然而，有待全面阐述这一证据。以下工作旨在通过展示诸如Hercules Buffoon之类的印刷资源的集中合成来填补这一未被注意的空白。，其中提到了速记-阐明了其用法，普遍性，关联性以及它在双关语，笑话和隐喻中的位置-以证明速记是多么普遍。错过它的提及或误解它的重要性是对影响隐私，问责制，节制和交流本身的文化体验视而不见。

速记也被包括特征，近距离描写，速记和速记的各种同义词所熟知，是一大套书写系统的总体术语，其主要目标是快速，保密，空间效率和（对在较小程度上）的普遍性。它们不仅是长期使用的缩写，而且是高度发达的书写系统，可以根据自己的规则运行并需要自己的读写能力。结果，速写的作品对未经训练的眼睛是难以辨认的。已经进行了个人研究来解密和发布个人作家的速记。