Quotes & Sayings About Shorthand

I tended to spend too much time with my favorite things, I loved them too hard until I wore them down. After a while, they became more like a shorthand for who I was and less like things I actually enjoyed. — Brittany Cavallaro

Obscenities are too often used for shock value, as a kind of shorthand for real expression of emotion. You've got to scale down your monstrosities. A scream is not a discovery. — John L'Heureux

I mean "God" as shorthand for the Good, for the animating energy of love; for Life, for the light that radiates from within people and from above; in the energies of nature, even in our rough, messy selves. — Anne Lamott

...but that very thought, that she might become his wife, had for some reason entered his head the very first time she sat in his study at a little round table, diligently taking down in shorthand the words he dictated in his muffled voice - and he had been purposely dry and sharp with her that day, so she would not feel the power she had already gained over him, but when, as he dictated to her, he imagined himself kneeling before her beneath the flickering light of a nearly spent candle and kissing her feet, with her unable to leave because she was his wife, and about to blow out the candle so they could plunge into the passionate, exquisite swim, then his voice became hoarse and he shut his eyes to blot out the sight of this little girl, as he purposely tried to picture her to help restrain his imagination, girl students being as untouchable as postulants... — Leonid Tsypkin

You can start any 'Monty Python' routine and people finish it for you. Everyone knows it like shorthand. — Robin Williams

Earth was the shorthand name for the classroom studio, named Earth, Fire, Air, Water, Spirit. Megan thought the alchemical name was especially appropriate for the art of sculpting, since the medium utilized all of those things. — Beth Kery

I had heard of Virginia before only in passing, a "crazy ex" with whom things had not ended well. I was accustomed to this lazy shorthand for men who dislike the emotions of women. — Alana Massey

When you see the same familiar faces, it's nice when you get a chance to play with the same musicians. You start to develop this shorthand so everybody knows where you're at and where you're going, but then again, there are always surprises. But the more people are comfortable with the material, the more free you can be with the music. — David Sanborn

I liked the shorthand we seemed to fall into when nobody else was around, the easy intimacy that had sprung up between us. I liked the way he turned his face and looked at me with amusement, like I had somehow turned out to be so much more than he had expected. On — Jojo Moyes

I can't do fiction unless I visualize what's going on. When I began to write science fiction, one of the things I found lacking in it was visual specificity. It seemed there was a lot of lazy imagining, a lot of shorthand. — William Gibson

Stop with the no, sir bullshit. We both know that sarcastic sir is your verbal shorthand for asshole. — Lorelei James

Hema thought of Shiva, her personal deity, and how the only sensible response to the madness of life ... was to cultivate a kind of madness within, to perform the mad dance of Shiva, ... to rock and sway and flap six arms and six legs to an inner tune. Hema moved gently ... she danced as if her minimalist gestures were shorthand for a much larger, fuller, reckless dance, one that held the whole world together, kept it from extinction. — Abraham Verghese

It's a real gift to work with my sister. We obviously have such a shorthand communicating with each other that it makes the process easier. And from growing up together and watching so many films together, we ended up with pretty similar taste. — Jennifer Todd

What's great is when you're working with somebody with whom you have a connection, it's exciting because there's a shorthand and you trust each other and you have a good time together on the set and so you can go a little farther than you might normally because you're with somebody that you trust. — Stanley Tucci

We had to keep explaining things, backtracking and filling gaps. We realised our own conversations had evolved into a kind of shorthand, a tidy, neat little minimalism. Covering the whole canvas in broad obvious brushstrokes for outsiders felt like a waste of sounds, time and effort. Speaking with footnotes. — Steven Hall

"Oppression" or "systems of oppression" operate as a shorthand terms in much writing and speaking so that we do not have to list all these systems of meaning and control each time (i.e. racism, ableism, xenophobia, etc.). I needed a term like that, but "oppression" implies a kind of top-down understanding of power that is at odds with the Foucaultian model I rely on in my work. — Dean Spade

I started formal piano training when I was 4. From there I had little violas, and I had dancing lessons of every sort and description, and painting lessons. I had German. And shorthand. — Twyla Tharp

My mother and Joe have a lovers' shorthand, an economy of gestures that comes when you are close enough to someone to speak their language. I wonder if my mother and father ever had that, or if my mother was always just trying to decipher him. — Jodi Picoult

It's exciting and it's thrilling and it's not particularly threatening, because they're not overtly sexual. A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that's a shorthand for all the feelings that they're not ready to deal with yet. — Stephen King

Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love-letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last. — Bram Stoker

People who work in specialized fields seem to have their own language. Practitioners develop a shorthand to communicate among themselves. The jargon can almost sound like a foreign language. — Barry Ritholtz

I think it worked two ways. One, a lot of people writing about the movie used that as shorthand and it could either be a good thing or they could use it to dismiss the movie like we were a copycat movie or something like that. It's very much its own story. It is a young woman in a post-apocalyptic society, but after that it's just a whole different kind of story and a different journey that she goes through. — Neil Burger

She'd known he'd understand. Brothers and sisters had their own language, their own shorthand. She was glad to be able to share the weird, ridiculous impossibleness of it with the only person who knew all the same stories, with the person who'd made those stories in the first place. (pg. 117) — Holly Black

The term "FTM-Butch Border War" just sounds like an alien land of yore. How is it that the gravitational pull of my beard and low-voice should hold [my lesbian friend's] masculinity in deferential orbit? That when standing side-by-side we are supposedly read in comparison, rendering her unalterably more feminine - shorthand, in patriarchal societies, for "lesser than"?

Masculinity has more than enough space to spare. But sometimes its flesh-and-blood vessels act as if we have to wound each other for it, like dogs fighting over too few scraps. Anyway, [she] and I know without speaking that in reality, right here and right now in our present moment, that she and I are two different sides of the same coin; two keys sung for the same tune."

- from "Snapshots: "Sharing Space with Women," Original Plumbing Magazine 2014 — Mitch Kellaway

The goal, Sister Clare had taught them in school, was shorthand so neat and so legible that anyone can pick up your steno book and type your letters for you. So neat and so legible, she had said, smiling at them from within her wimple, that if you elope on your lunch hour, another secretary can finish your letters for you that afternoon. — Alice McDermott

In point of fact, 'Simpson-Bowles' has become a symbol, or SimBowl, rather than an actual plan, political shorthand for the process of long-term deficit reduction. — Joe Klein

Jean Louise was accustomed to her uncle's brand of intellectual shorthand: it was his custom to state one or two isolated facts, and a conclusion seemingly unsupported thereby. Slowly and surely, if prodded correctly, Dr. Finch would unwind the reel of his strange lore to reveal reasoning that glittered with a private light of its own. — Harper Lee

I find I like to work with a lot of the same actors, because I find that there's sort of shorthand there, and there is this unspoken trust, both ways. They trust me and I trust them. And I know what I'm going to get from them, to an extent. It's just fun, kind of creating this little family. — Todd Phillips

Something about having been with the same man made me feel especially close to her-like she and I had a shorthand that only people who'd had the same penis inside them could understand. — Jenny Mollen

Lego was our fourth film, because we did two Cloudys, so yeah there's a little bit of shorthand that's involved and then you can anticipate things- because for me it's like, I get a script for a movie and I go, "Wow that's a pretty good script", then you sign on and a couple months later they show you the first cut and you're like, "Whoa, how did that happen?" — Mark Mothersbaugh

I'm really interested in making a mark on a paper and letting that be cursive shorthand for an idea - that's the origin of cartooning. — Craig Thompson

God for a month of power & a good shorthand writer. — Winston Churchill

When you play the same character for a long time, you have a shorthand. You get onto the set, you put on your outfit and two-thirds of your work is done because you've built on that work for so many years. — Lisa Edelstein

But after all I find in my work an echo of what struck me. I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand. In my shorthand there may be words that cannot be deciphered. There may be mistakes or gap — Vincent Van Gogh

What am I talking about here? "Derp" is a term borrowed from the cartoon "South Park" that has achieved wide currency among people I talk to, because it's useful shorthand for an all-too-obvious feature of the modern intellectual landscape: people who keep saying the same thing no matter how much evidence accumulates that it's completely wrong. — Anonymous

Christian, hath not God secretly instructed thee by his Spirit from the Word, how to read the shorthand of his providence? Dost — William Gurnall

Mathematical economics is old enough to be respectable, but not all economists respect it. It has powerful supporters and impressive testimonials, yet many capable economists deny that mathematics, except as a shorthand or expository device, can be applied to economic reasoning. There have even been rumors that mathematics is used in economics (and in other social sciences) either for the deliberate purpose of mystification or to confer dignity upon common places as French was once used in diplomatic communications. — James R Newman

If anything is scary about my writing, it's that it's the product of a very particular vision and doesn't reference common speech that heavily. By 'common speech,' I don't mean language as much as an agreed-on way of seeing, or a shorthand. — Mary Gaitskill

Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other. — Yo-Yo Ma

I've been working for years in my local congregation to undermine the idea that the conservative-liberal divide is reliable shorthand for "faithful to God" vs. "unfaithful to God. — Ken Wilson

(1) Use mathematics as shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can't succeed in 4, burn 3. This I do often. — Alfred Marshall

It's only the word God, you know--it makes such a conventional noise."
"It's only shorthand for where we come from, where we're going, and what it's all about."
"And do religious people find out what it's all about? Do they really get the answer to the riddle?"
"They just get a whiff of an answer sometimes. — Dodie Smith

What of Thought? The Crew had developed a kind of shorthand whereby they could set forth any visions that might come their way. Conversations at the Spoon had become little more than proper nouns, literary allusions, critical or philosophical terms linked in certain ways. Depending on how you arranged the building blocks at your disposal, you were smart or stupid. Depending on how others reacted they were In or Out. The number of blocks, however, was finite.
"Mathematically, boy," he told himself, "if nobody else original comes along, they're bound to run out of arrangements someday. What then?" What indeed. This sort of arranging and rearranging was Decadence, but the exhaustion of all possible permutations and combinations was death.
It scared Eigenvalue, sometimes. He would go in back and look at the set of dentures. Teeth and metals endure. — Thomas Pynchon

Now, where were we? Read me back the last line." " 'Read me back the last line,' " read back the corporal who could take shorthand. — Joseph Heller

Is he one of us, or strictly NOCD? (Which, in case you don't know is shorthand for 'Not our class, dear'.) — Rhys Bowen

I shall not attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description (of pornography), and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that. — Potter Stewart

If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature. — Charles Baudelaire

I have no intention of becoming a shorthand author. — Isaac Pitman

There was no shorthand for "I'm sorry." You were obliged to speak those two words. — Wally Lamb

Lightning is the shorthand of a storm, and tells of chaos. — Eric Mackay

Books provide a handy shorthand when Rory's mostly MIA father, Christopher, is first introduced to viewers. Christopher's offer to buy Rory the Compact Oxford English Dictionary she covets is sincere; his lack of ability to follow through on his good intentions is Christopher in a nutshell. — Jennifer Crusie

Music is the shorthand of emotion — Leo Tolstoy

There are lesbian sex parties that happen in the city and how they will often have No Bio-Cock Policies, meaning, No Trans Women. Or, optimistically, Trans Women: Keep Your Pants On. Meanwhile trans guys are welcome to brandish whatever cocks they want. Kind of frustrating, kind of problematic ... The term bio-cock has become shorthand for the fact that trans women aren't sexually welcome in any communities anywhere. — Imogen Binnie

An SJH, in ballistics shorthand. It was a brutally efficient piece of ordnance. Not exactly a dum-dum, named after Dum-Dum, India, where a British army officer had invented a bullet that mushroomed out on impact and acted as a miniature wrecking ball inside the body. Innovation wasn't always good for you. The .45 SJH had blown right through the front of Cassie Decker's skull and ended up lodged deep in her brain. It had been dug out of her during the autopsy and the slug preserved as evidence in her murder investigation. It had retained enough of its shape — David Baldacci

By the 1920s if you wanted to work behind a lunch counter you needed to know that 'Noah's boy' was a slice of ham (since Ham was one of Noah's sons) and that 'burn one' or 'grease spot' designated a hamburger. 'He'll take a chance' or 'clean the kitchen' meant an order of hash, 'Adam and Eve on a raft' was two poached eggs on toast, 'cats' eyes' was tapioca pudding, 'bird seed' was cereal, 'whistleberries' were baked beans, and 'dough well done with cow to cover' was the somewhat labored way of calling for an order of toast and butter. Food that had been waiting too long was said to be 'growing a beard'. Many of these shorthand terms have since entered the mainstream, notably BLT for a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, 'over easy' and 'sunny side up' in respect of eggs, and 'hold' as in 'hold the mayo'. — Bill Bryson

I won't make shorthand films, because I don't want to manipulate audiences into assuming quick, manufactured truths. — John Cassavetes

In mixed company women practise a kind of visual shorthand that they later decode in detail in other women's company. — Malcolm De Chazal

To say exactly what one means, even to one's own private satisfaction, is difficult. To say exactly what one means and to involve another person is harder still. Communication between you and me relies on assumptions, associations, commonalities and a kind of agreed shorthand, which no-one could precisely define but which everyone would admit exists. That is one reason why it is an effort to have a proper conversation in a foreign language. Even if I am quite fluent, even if I understand the dictionary definitions of words and phrases, I cannot rely on a shorthand with the other party, whose habit of mind is subtly different from my own. Nevertheless, all of us know of times when we have not been able to communicate in words a deep emotion and yet we know we have been understood. This can happen in the most foreign of foreign parts and it can happen in our own homes. It would seem that for most of us, most of the time, communication depends on more than words. — Jeanette Winterson

The name of God should no longer come from the mouth of man. This word that has so long been degraded by usage no longer means anything ... To use the word God is more than sloth, it is a refusal to think, a king of short cut, a hideous shorthand. — Arthur Adamov

When you work with somebody for a long period of time, you develop a shorthand with everything. — Beck

With comics, you've got to develop some kind of shorthand. You can't make every drawing look like a detailed etching. The average reader actually doesn't want all that detail; it interferes with the flow of the reading process. — Robert Crumb

People say, "I have heart disease," not "I am heart disease." Somehow the presumption of a person's individuality is not compromised by those diagnostic labels. All the labels tell us is that the person has a specific challenge with which he or she struggles in a highly diverse life. But call someone "a schizophrenic" or "a borderline" and the shorthand has a way of closing the chapter on the person. It reduces a multifaceted human being to a diagnosis and lulls us into a false sense that those words tell us who the person is, rather than only telling us how the person suffers. — Martha Manning

To my way of thinking, the concept drawings that Rembrandt did, the drawings he made that he used to model his artists, to work out the compositions of his paintings: those are cartoons. Look at his sketch for the return of the prodigal son. The expression on the angry younger brother's face. The head is down; the eyebrow is just one curved line over the eyes. It communicates in a very shorthand way. It's beautiful, expressive, and, in a peculiar way, it's more powerful than the kind of stilted, formalized expression in the final painting. — Jim Woodring

A funny thing happens when more than one knitter gathers in a public place. A solo knitter, presuming she is a woman, quickly fades into the backdrop like a potted palm or a quietly nursing mother. ... A single knitter is shorthand for "nothing to see here, move on."

But when knitters gather, we become incongruously conspicuous. We are a species that other people aren't used to seeing in flocks, like a cluster of Corgis, a dozen Elvis impersonators waiting for the elevator. — Clara Parkes

I didn't know shorthand either. This meant I couldn't get a good job after college. My mother kept telling me nobody wanted a plain English major. But an English major who knew shorthand would be something else again. Everybody would want her. She would be in demand among all the up-and-coming young men and she would transcribe letter after thrilling letter. The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters. — Sylvia Plath

Ever think of becoming a cop?"

"I did, but at the time there wasn't much opportunity for women. Lady cops were confined to typing, taking shorthand, and the juvenile division."

"And I don't suppose you have any womanly skills like typing or taking shorthand?"

I smiled. "No, but I'm a mean shot with a .38 and I bake terrific bread. — Marcia Muller

Awkward conversations. They're the heart of the drug trade. The driving force that keeps criminals out of jail is paranoia. You can think you know people, but the truth is, you never know who they're talking to. The life of an outlaw: Around every corner lies a cop. In every basement waits a bust. Every friend is the guy who sells you out to keep his own ass out of jail. Sure, it was rare, but you just never knew.
The result was a series of shorthand and euphemisms so obscure even the pros often weren't sure what they were talking about. Sales became pickups. Pot, ganja, bud, or weed became lettuce, green, happy, herb, smoke... the list went on, and changed from dealer to dealer. — Daniel Younger

But gossip must see its characters in black and white, equip them with sins and motives easily conveyed in the shorthand of conversation. — John Le Carre

Dad always warned that it was misleading when one imagined people, when one sas them in the Mind's Eye, because one never remembered them as they really were, with as many inconsistencies as there were hairs on a human head (100,000 to 200,000). Instead, the mind used a lazy shorthand, smoothed the person over into their most dominating characteristic
their pessimism or insecurity (something really being lazy, turning them into either Nice or Mean)
and one made the mistake of judging them from this basis alone and risked, on a subsequent encounter, being dangerously surprised. — Marisha Pessl

Sociopath is a word that has sort of become shorthand for psychopath and there's a distinct difference, it's interesting if you look it up. Sociopath if you look at the medical definition, the profile of a sociopath is that they are supremely intelligent people that are also pathological liars, they have no moral structure and there is one more, they have no compassion or empathy for other people. — Cillian Murphy

To me 'The Big Easy' is shorthand for owning big stocks that are easy for wary investors to buy into. These stocks tend to outperform during the back half of bull markets. — Kenneth Fisher

In the sixties, the recycling of pop culture turning it into Pop art and camp had its own satirical zest. Now we're into a different kind of recycling. Moviemakers give movies of the past an authority that those movies didn't have; they inflate images that may never have compelled belief, images that were no more than shorthand gestures and they use them not as larger-than-life jokes but as altars. — Pauline Kael

It's amazing how often "right" is mere shorthand for "safe. — Mari Passananti

You can write shorthand and still look at the guy you're talking to. — Michael Caine

The question of "canon and creed," which underlies quite a bit of this book, has become quite urgent and controversial and needs to be addressed from the point of view of those of us who are actually working with the biblical canon itself rather than using the word "canon" as shorthand for the systematic theology they already possess. — N. T. Wright

However good a communicator a director is, unless they've been actors, it's just not the same as the shorthand you get with someone who's been an actor. — Colin Firth

When we're discussing who to invite to a dinner party, my wife Chaz and I sometimes use the shorthand, 'good value for money,' which indicates guests expected to be entertaining. — Roger Ebert

People often need to describe things quickly and so they use a shorthand. The problem is that after they use a label, they begin to think only in terms of the label instead of the totality of the experience a novel provides. — Akhil Sharma

I don't know myself," he said. "I sit down with a white board before the spot that strikes me, and I say, 'That white board must become something!' I work for a long time, I come back home dissatisfied, I put it away in the closet. When I have rested a little I go to look at it with a kind of fear. I am still dissatisfied because I have too clearly in my mind the splendid original to be content with what I have made of it. But after all, I find in my work an echo of what struck me. I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand. In my shorthand there may be words that cannot be deciphered, there may be mistakes or gaps, but there is something in it of what the woods or beach or figure has told me. Do you understand?" "No. — Irving Stone

Every case I worked is closed. All the principals were either abducted and resettled . . . or zeroed," she said, using a verb that I'd heard from time to time if my principal was in a similar line of work. It had become popular among the Mossad. They liked to use shorthand they thought was American. Zero — Jeffery Deaver

I'm very interested in sublimation. I love the way Francis Bacon talked about the grin without the cat, the sensation without the boredom of its conveyance ... I've always wanted to be able to convey figurative imagery in a kind of shorthand, to get it across in as direct a way as possible. I want there to be a human presence without having to depict it in full. — Cecily Brown

You work enough with someone and you develop a shorthand. You know how he likes to work through the day and he knows where you're vulnerable and where your weaknesses and strengths are, so it makes for a good team, a team that knows who's over there behind your back. — David Strathairn

In the middle of his rapid-fire dictatioin he said softly, without pausing, "When the sun is on your hair, it shines like spun gold," and launched back into his letter. Lauren, who had inadvertently taken half of the compliment down in shorthand, gave him a killing glance, and he chuckled. — Judith McNaught

do a typing and shorthand — Kate Atkinson

Read me back the last line." " 'Read me back the last line,' " read back the corporal who could take shorthand. "Not my last line, stupid!" the colonel shouted. "Somebody else's." " 'Read me back the last line,' " read back the corporal. "That's my last line again!" shrieked the colonel, turning purple with anger. "Oh, no, sir," corrected the corporal. "That's my last line. I read it to you just a moment ago. Don't you remember, sir? It was only a moment ago." "Oh, my God! — Joseph Heller

Cause somewhere in the Quizling Clinic, there's a shorthand typist taking seconds over minutes. — Elvis Costello

When anxiety about the course of a new cultural movement or political controversy arose, the average American did not have far to go to find a handy historical parallel to express quickly and completely the nature of his fears. If the concern threatened his sense of himself as part of a new nation that was moving forward, the metaphor of Salem witchcraft functioned well as a universally familiar shorthand for the social and political costs of sliding backward into a colonial world of irrationality, tyranny, and superstition. — Gretchen A. Adams

Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth. — Gore Vidal

God - it's merely shorthand for where we come from, where we're going and what it's all about — Dodie Smith

Growing up in a family of actors, what's great about it is that they're very supportive and they understand what it's like to be an actor - the rejections, the highs and lows ... and having a common language with them is great because you have shorthand speech. — Chris Pine

'Middle school' is used as shorthand for a time when things change. It's a time a lot of kids feel like they don't even have one good friend. — Rebecca Stead

A chief petty officer taught me shorthand, which got me promoted to yeoman first class. — Jack Adams

But wouldn't [the Spice Girls] have shown a little bit more solidarity if they had at least called themselves feminists? The feminist activist Jennifer Pozner was more dismissive,writing that it was "probably a fair assumption to say that 'zigazig-ha' is not Spice shorthand for 'subvert the dominant paradigm. — Marisa Meltzer

A friend of mine tells that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Mary lifted her own steno book. Only about six pages old, it still had its cool, slim heft and straight cardboard covers. By the end of the month, its pages would be bloated with the pencil strokes of her shorthand, its back would be cracked and its edges softened. And then she would begin another. The march of time. Pauline's eyes — Alice McDermott

Images are ... a kind of emotional shorthand. — Erica Jong

Being on a successful television show is a good thing. It's steady work. It's a chance to work with a group of people in an intimate way ... where you develop a sort of shorthand with each other, and a trust. — Kelly Rowan

Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance. — Leo Tolstoy

Your voice is the wildest thing you own," Brooke says to me. "And you're giving it away. You can't see it. Your obsession is blinding you." He is angry. He is talking in shorthand. "You're losing yourself. — Terry Tempest Williams

You learn what can become a good joke and can be repeatable. You have a shorthand about how to introduce a joke to someone. — Lennon Parham