Almost at once he increased his
natural speed of composition by devising a system of abbreviations and symbols
that he used in his correspondence and handwritten first drafts for the rest of
his life. “Two crossed lines with a slantwise connection for ‘and,’ a small g
with a line under it for the ending ‘ing’ on any word, the letter y for ‘you’
and all its derivatives, ‘yours,’ ‘yourself,’ etc.; the numeral 1 followed by
for ‘once,’ similarly for ‘twice,’ and so on; ‘bec’ for ‘because,’ and many
more. It seems cumbersome at first sight, but it became a great time-saver.”
When typing up his drafts of course he had to revert to normal usage.
No comments:
Post a Comment