Shorthand is an abbreviated and/or symbolic writing method that increases speed or brevity of writing as compared to a normal method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek stenos (narrow) and graphē or graphie (writing). It has also been called brachygraphy, from Greek brachys (short) and tachygraphy, from Greek tachys (swift, speedy), depending on whether compression or speed of writing is the goal. Many forms of shorthand exist. A typical shorthand system provides symbols or abbreviations for words and common phrases, which can allow someone well trained in the system to write as quickly as people speak. Abbreviation methods are alphabet-based and use different abbreviating approaches. Speedwriting by Emma Dearborn requires memorization of a unique abbreviation to a corresponding word.

Classical Antiquity

The earliest known indication of shorthand systems is from Ancient Greece, namely the Acropolis stone (Akropolisstein) from mid-4th century BC. The marble slab shows a writing system primarily based on vowels, using certain modifications to indicate consonants.

Hellenistic tachygraphy is reported from the 2nd century BC onwards, though there are indications that it might be older. The oldest datable reference is a contract from Middle Egypt, stating that Oxyrhynchos gives his Greek slave to the "semeiographer" Apollonios for two years to be taught shorthand writing. Hellenistic tachygraphy consisted of word stem signs and word ending signs. Over time, many syllabic signs were developed.

In Ancient Rome, Marcus Tullius Tiro (103 BC–4 BC), a slave and later a freedman of Cicero, developed the Tironian notes so he could write down Cicero's speeches. The Tironian notes consisted of word stem abbreviations (notae) and of word ending abbreviations (titulae). The original Tironian notes consisted of about 4000 signs but new signs were introduced so that their number might increase to as many as 13,000. In order to have a less complex writing system, a syllabic shorthand script was used sometimes.

It is possible that the use of shorthand in antiquity was associated in some way with the Art of Memory, which used notae, in combination with memorized places and images, as the basis of mnemonic training in the rhetorical tradition. Shorthand notae may have also been an integral part of a 'magical' art of memory, the Ars Notoria.Frances Yates, in her work The Art of Memory (1966) p43, discusses the association of a trained memory with the magical use of shorthand signs (notae):

"It may have been out of this atmosphere that there was formed a tradition which, going underground for centuries and suffering transformations in the process, appeared in the Middle Ages as the Ars Notoria, a magical art of memory attributed to Apollonius or sometimes to Solomon. The practitioner of the Ars Notoria gazed at figures or diagrams curiously marked and called 'notae' whilst reciting magical prayers. He hoped to gain in this way knowledge of memory, of all the arts and sciences, a different 'nota' being provided for each discipline. The Ars Notoria is perhaps a bastard descendant of the classical art of memory, or of that difficult branch of it which used the shorthand notae."