Flatlined: Making a start on the NCTJ modules

I decided after my last entry to cut out all the distractions that were getting in the way of me learning my shorthand properly, and after what was supposed to be two days of quick tying-up, a week and four days later here I am. I've finished working through my first Teeline book! Now that it's time to start working through my file of NCTJ modules (pictured), I'll look back on what I've learned so far.

Towards the end it was getting kind of hard going through the only book I own so far, Teeline For Journalists. It introduces a larger number of outlines in each chapter, so that by the final chapter on medical journalism, the amount being introduced had made the exercises a little tiresome to wade through with all the page-flipping and even Googling necessary to transcribe accurately. But it's done, and I'm pretty pleased about that.

I've made a pretty decent start on shorthand, often noted to be one of the most difficult skills tested in the national journalism exams. The material officially provided by the NCTJ, with whom I registered at the end of last month, only covers the basics and the staff recommend that students take classes to perfect their writing. I'm quite likely do that eventually, but not right from the start which could be more than a little costly and perhaps too slow. I'll try to take some classes when my speed's already reached a reasonable level.

Still, that's only the start of my journo journey. Now I know how to write the Teeline alphabet, how to link its letters and the the commmon prefixes and suffixes in English, it's my job get to get quick. At the moment a first year primary school student wouldn't be impressed by my writing speed, let alone an interview subject with better things to do, so my task is to get somewhere near the 100 words per minute that will hopefully one day be useful to me in a Journalistic career. Luckily I have some NCTJ teaching tapes to help me out, although realistically the best way to improve will be the undertaking the slog of getting a set of Teeline dictionaries and learning as much of them as I can. Wish me luck.

Short and curlies

It's Easter Saturday and this interlude in the busy biblical bustle of this long weekend means all you can really do is go for a drive and somehow work through the throng of drivers and shoppers at the nearest big store to escape brandishing sufficient reduced treats wrenched from the aisles to last till Tuesday.

Today's Guardian notes that changes in the law could mean this year might be last which has an Easter Sunday free of trade in the larger shops. It might be a sad loss of a British tradition if the actual process of getting about was not so exhausting due to the rush of people and marketing so that we can accomplish everything today. The good thing about Easter weekend for me is definitely that you can at least sit back and read damn nearly every article in the paper just like in the good old days, if they ever existed.

I'm pleased to see that a high-falutin’ paper like the Guardian hasn't trashed Manchester Passion as I feared it might, having in fact produced a review that reads in its basic appraisal rather like mine, although its fancy use of quotes has my feature over a barrel. It actually ends up by describing the evening's events as ‘truly transcendent’ and ‘really quite beautiful.’

One weakness of my version is that my description of the filming and production comes out more than a little geeky: focusing on the details of presentation and not on very much that would have escaped any viewer's attention. But hey, it's a blog so I can be a little geeky, right?

Once I've finished with my little Easter newspaper and TV rituals it'll be time for me to practice my shorthand again, having let it slide this week. For those of you keeping an eye on me out there (no one really, my visitors chart tells me, mais c'est la vie) I've almost finished Chapter 7 which features a rather fiendish 'translation' from shorthand notes which has sneakily linked up lots of little words together that weren't explained in the lessons. I'll just assume that the entire global community awaits my every word and let you all know how I'm doing over the next day or two.

Shorthanded

I'm currently learning to use Teeline shorthand for an NCTJ distance learning journalism course that I intend to complete June/July-ish. I'm just working on my own and it's not exactly riveting but there is definitely something generally uplifting about learning a new written language, if you can call it that. It looks kind of nice when you get used to drawing those curly shapes in gentle soothing motions. Another plus is that hardly anyone will be able to read any non-existent love notes I forget to tidy away.

I'm learning as much as I can on my own before attempting the collection of tapes and ring-bound information that the NCTJ have sent me. The great thing is that you don't even have to send of for anything at all to learn shorthand as long as you have the internet to hand. I was looking around at 43things.com and someone was asking about online versions of shorthand manuals. The reply listed a site with some Gregg Shorthand manuals which is well designed but these are only online by virtue of being past their copyrights and, more importantly for us UK journos, the UK standard systems are now Teeline and Pitman.

Luckily for me a quick Google resulted in another complete book online - Teeline for Journalists by Vivien Saunders. She's a lecturer at Harrow College, part of the University of Westminster and she's written a book, I believe as yet unpublished, which is the only guide ‘specially adapted [...] to the needs of journalists.’ So far I've found the book to be a very good way of learning - for every two or three symbols you are given to learn, an exercise is set, so you learn nice and gradually even though you're writing in shorthand right from the first chapter. The book is current and therefore has lots of nice journalistic vocab that you're likely to find yourself using today, and the exercises are written as parts of amusingly hammy news stories.

●Download Teeline for Journalists as a Word document.