Media captionPitman shorthand expert Mary Sorene demonstrates how it works For more than 2,000 years people have used shorthand to make note-taking quicker and more reliable. It's a skill that has weathered being banned by a Roman emperor and associations with witchcraft, but could technology finally kill it? To the uninitiated it looks like gobbledegook, an alien language with an indecipherable alphabet. But the squiggles and lines on the page are actually a version of English. Shorthand is a method of quickly writing down information.

It has roots in the Senate of ancient Rome and allows the annotation of more than 200 words a minute by top exponents. It enables secretaries to transcribe meetings and dictated letters. Newspaper reporters can get down details of court case proceedings or interviews. But, in an age of electronic voice recording and instant tweeting of events, is shorthand becoming obsolete? 'Honestly, shorthand? Who still writes that stuff?'

A monthly magazine Hathi Trust Digital Library Navigation. A complete manual of the Isaac Pitman system of shorthand. A shorthand magazine. Devoted to Pitman's New Era Shorthand. Completely devoted to New Era Shorthand. As do most of the advertisements in the magazine.

'Who even reads it? The art of shorthand doesn't just have one foot in the grave, it has the other planted firmly on a banana peel.' But shorthand is still mandatory in some professions. The National Council for the Training of Journalists insists trainees achieve a written speed of 100 words per minute to pass its diploma. It remains 'indispensable for any court reporter, and a vital skill for journalists in all sectors who need an easily accessible and permanent note of every conversation in their working day', the organisation insists. It's three times quicker to type out shorthand notes than to listen back to audio recordings, says Mary Sorene, secretary of the. It's also illegal to make audio or video recordings of most proceedings in UK courts, although this type of coverage has been since last year.

'Shorthand will be included in NCTJ qualifications as long as there remains a demand for it,' says the organisation's chairman, Kim Fletcher. But there are several types. Resetter Canon Ip 1900. The NCTJ uses the Teeline system. It's based on a combination of outlines representing individual letters. Some sounds, usually vowels, are removed to aid speed. For example, the word 'father' will involve writing simply a letter 'f' and an elongated 't' representing the 'ther' sound. Teeline is now the most popular system in the UK.

Formerly, the most heavily used form of shorthand was Pitman, which dates back to the 19th Century. Image copyright Wikimedia Image caption The Teeline alphabet In business, shorthand has traditionally been seen as a secretarial skill, but, according to Sarah Austin, operating director at Page Personnel Secretarial and Business Support, it's becoming more important 'at the senior end of the jobs market'. 'The role of the personal assistant and executive assistant has evolved and there are more business assistants, which means the need to record detailed accurate minutes from board meetings, client pitches or confidential meetings is more important than ever,' she says. Shorthand can be a tedious skill to learn. It requires practising until a decent word speed and level of accuracy is achieved, which usually takes several months.