Excerpt from The Manual of Phonography This work is a presentation of the system of phonetic shorthand, the elementary parts of which were originally invented by Isaac Pitman, of Bath, England, in 1837; which was modified, improved, and named "Phonography" by him, in 1840; and which, developed and perfected through the suggestions, experiments, and tests of a multitude of practical writers in England and America, reached, substantially, its present form in the later fifties. The first edition of this Manual, written by Benn Pitman (brother of the inventor of phonography) in 1855, appeared in no fewer than live distinct issues before 1860, when the work was first revised. Numerous issues followed up to 1885, in which year it was again revised in collaboration by Benn Pitman and Jerome B. Howard, by whom the present revised and improved edition is also prepared. But slight additions have been made to the materiel of the system in the course of these several revisions; neither has the plan of presentation been essentially changed, it being felt that any marked alteration of method would be accompanied by a diminution of that clearness and simplicity for which the book has been so long conspicuous among shorthand text-books, and which have made it so eminently successful for both self and class instruction. The chief advances in the present revision consist in a somewhat modified and improved order of presenting the several appendages, in the earlier introduction of logograms, with suitable exercises, and in the addition of a new and copious set of dictation exercises. It is natural, considering the astonishing spread of phonography of late years, that many variations upon the recognized system should be published and to a limited extent adopted. The authors of this work have felt, however, after careful examination and test of many hundreds of supposed improvements, that they were, for the most part, the expression of mere individual taste or caprice. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.