Section 1. Punctuation

The same rules for punctuation obtain that are used in ordinary writing and printing, and the same characters are employed. The dash, however, commences with a waved line to distinguish it from a Te or De.

No diæresis or apostrophe is used; but the hyphen, caret, quotation points, parenthesis, brackets, etc., may be.

Section 2. Capital Letters

For common practice no distinction of capital letters should be attempted. We have a Literary Style designed to represent the language more accurately, as also foreign languages, in which the capital letters are distinguished.

Section 3. Directions For Future Practice

This style properly reduced to practice is capable of great rapidity as well as ease and freedom in writing. No person of ordinary nerve should rest satisfied with less than three times his speed in long-hand, and all may go considerably beyond this, unless they contract their long-hand writing. But it is difficult to instruct the writer in the laws of speed by a word of advice. To make the advice of any value, it must be followed, - followed thoroughly and persistently.

We will suppose that the student has gone through with the exercises in this compendium, and understands clearly all the principles of the art; that he has a free and ready use of the pen, avoiding a cramped position of the hand or body, and has trained himself to accuracy of form. He should now go back to the alphabet, and see that he can write it with the most perfect readiness. He should be able to write the forty-two characters in fifteen seconds. He should then proceed to the compound signs, and acquire the same skill in their use, writing them all in about twenty-five seconds. Next the consonant forms that unite without an angle should be subjected to drill until the two can be struck with the same readiness as the single letters. All ordinary combinations of the vowels with the consonants should next be mastered with equal perfectness. Such syllables as are found in the first easy lessons of some spelling-book (we prefer the Elementary Spelling-Book by Webster) - ba, be, hi, bo,bu, ab, eb, ib, ob, ub, etc. - are excellent for this purpose. The student who wishes to become a rapid writer should have such easy syllables read to him until he can write them as rapidly as an ordinary reader enunciates them. He should then proceed, writing from dictation, with words of three letters, following the course of the spelling-book; and with frequent reviews, rewriting the same thing from ten to twenty times, go through the spelling-book, He will now be prepared to take up phrase signs. These should be read to him, at first from the compendium, and afterward from some simple elementary book. The student should proceed from this to passages from the Bible, - extracts from the Gospels, the Psalms, or Job, - and from such easy beginnings advance to more difficult works, according to his taste.

If this way seems long, we can assure the student that it will pay much better than to blunder on a year or two in a blow and uninteresting way. Some pupils acquire a rapid style with much less practice than indicated here; yet we do not doubt that the best would do still better with this thorough preparation.

We must, also, here protest against a too prevalent idea that, while teachers are necessary in all other arts, sciences, and pursuits, the art of shorthand is so much more easily acquired than any other that no teacher is nec--e6sary. Probably most students will master the art under a competent teacher in one fourth the time that they would master it relying only on their own quickness of perception.