Did shorthand used to be more popular? I remember reading in The Westing Game as a child unfamiliar with English, and had to infer the meaning of the word. The book seemed to assume that its readers (mainly teens) knew the word.
> For nearly a century, Gregg was an essential part of American society. As recently as the 1970s, almost every high school in the country taught Gregg. Certainly, every business school and most colleges offered Gregg-certified shorthand courses. But Gregg’s decline began when McGraw-Hill bought Gregg Publishing, shortly after John Robert Gregg’s death. [...] The real death knell for Gregg, though, was the arrival of the personal computer in the 1980s. Even high-level executives no longer dictated letters to their secretaries; they wrote them themselves on their desktop computers. Companies that used to have scores of skilled shorthand writers eliminated their steno pools entirely.
Another theory for the decline was the it was mostly women, and smart women, who were working as shorthand writers. As women's lib progressed, those women had much better job oppertunities, and left the field.
Before word processors, it was routine for people, possibly including teenagers, to learn it as vocational training for clerical positions, and it used to be essential for journalists. I was once interviewed by a shorthand-taking journalist about a decade ago.
