**Principles of Characterie** *Brent Werness* # Learning Characterie without the characters Characterie is the original English language shorthand system. If you have learned a more modern shorthand system like [Gregg](https://greggshorthand.github.io/), [Pitman](https://www.long-live-pitmans-shorthand.org.uk/), or [Forkner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forkner_shorthand) you are likely coming into this with some expectations of what you might see. You likely expect it to either be based on spelling or sounds, to have a special fast-to-write alphabet, a variety of rule to take the basic spelling or sounds and abbreviate them to make the words shorter to write, and a few words that are so common that they are given a special status and written with a single brief form. Characterie *will* have many of these features. There will be a fast-to-write alphabet. There will be some aspects related to the spelling or sounds. There are certainly rules about how to abbreviate, and words that are given special brief forms. However as you will see, it will still feel foreign. There are actually incredibly few rules for abbreviations. The core organizing principle will not be spelling or sounds, but actually meanings through synonyms and antonyms. And finally, those words that are granted the status of getting brief forms are not exclusively common words, but contain words like *banish*, *dizzy* or *tempest*. Thus, before we launch in to learning the system itself, we should take a moment, without strange symbols and writing directions, to understand how you need to think to write in Characterie. To focus our discussion, I will take the following Shakespeare quote and slowly nudge it closer and closer to how someone might write it in Characterie.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

## Special characters for common words First, some of the most common words, like pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, and articles (along with a smattering of other terms and phrases) will be important enough to give them unique small symbols, which are referred to as *particles* in Characterie. In this example, the words which are given the status of particles are *the*, *a*, and *and*. If you would like to see them all, you can find a complete list in the [dictionary](./dictionary.md.html). For right now, I'll write these words in a smaller font to indicate that they are going to be made small just by giving them an inherently small symbol (like a circle, or short line segment).

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

This leaves us to handle the words *all*, *world's*, *stage*, *men*, *women*, *merely*, and *players*. ## Reduce words to their root word The next step is to separate off things like common endings, tenses, number, etc. Most concretely, this means we will separate out endings like *-s*, *-er*, and *-ing* and develop fast ways of marking the when needed. For many of these, we will be guided by sounds and simply leaving enough to make it something that can be read back, so for instance, we will not make any distinction betweens *worlds* and *world's*, as it will be clear from context.

All the world·s a stage, and all the man·s and woman·s mere play·er·s.

Notice that I dropped the ending *-ly* from *merely*. Characterie is not fully capable of taking verbatim transcriptions, and in particular it has no way to denote the difference between *mere* and *merely*. Indeed, historians use features like this to try and identify if a text was transcribed by Characterie or not! The purpose of this is to reduce the variety of word we need to learn to write. We no longer need to have ways to write *play*, *plays*, *player*, and *players*, but instead need only write the root word (called a *lemma* in linguistics) and then mark it with these modifier (which will again be tiny things like dots). Thus we are left only to learn to write *all*, *world*, *stage*, *man*, *woman*, *mere*, and *play*. ## Form a core vocabulary of concepts So far, this has all been standard for the way most shorthand writing systems work. However, these next steps are, to the best of my knowledge, unique to Characterie. To represent all other words, we will first pick a list of ~550 words that will serve as the sign-posts for the english language. These are not necessarily common words, but instead an intentionally diverse collection of words that allow you to write as most words as possible as one of: (1) a synonym, (2) an antonym, or (3) a sub-type of one of these core words. These core words are given the name *characterical* words, to represent the fact that these are the core concepts which are given a single character, and all other words will be derived from these. The fact that words can derive from the characterical words in many different ways means that the set of characterical words needs to be very carefully chosen, and is *not* necessarily what you expect. For instance, the word *no* will be characterical, however the word *yes* will not be, since it is an antonym of *no*. There will be no word for things like *hour* or *minute* as they are types of *time*. No words for *happy* as that can be related to *enjoy* or, as Timothy Bright preferred, as being related to *bless*. Each one of these will be given a special symbol which will encode the first letter of the word, along with a way of marking which of the characterical words it is in the list. In the full system, these are given specific individual symbols. For the purposes of this section, I'll simply refer to them as a₁, a₂, and so on. If we substitute the words which are characterical, we see that this is:

a₉ the w₃₀·s a stage, and a₉ the m₃·s and woman·s mere p₁₂·er·s.

This leaves us with only *stage*, *woman* and *mere* as the three remaining words. ## Define the rest via accompanied meanings For these remaining words we get into the heart of the system, the notion of *accompanied meanings*. This is the way that you take a word and change it into a synonym, antonym, or sub-type. If you are making a synonym or sub-type of the given word, this is called the *consenting* accompanied meaning, where as antonyms are *dissenting* accompanied meanings. Consenting meanings will be marked by placing the first letter of the word you want to write on the left of the word, dissenting will be marked by placing it on the right. For all of these words, we will work with consenting meaning. To be able to work these out, you need extreme familiarity with all of the ~550 characterical words. The original text TK gives many examples of such consenting and dissenting pairs in the back (about 5000), however this is beyond the current scope to transcribe this. 1. **Stage.** *Stage* has two possible words it can derive from, either *place* or *play*. In this context of theater, it is likely less ambiguous to derive from *play*, which we already saw was p₁₂, so *stage* is "the word that starts with *s* that has consenting meaning with p₁₂." We will write this as ^sp₁₂. 1. **Woman.** Everything that people create reflects the thoughts and values of the people at that time. This system is no exception, and so *woman* is derived from *man* which is m₃. Moreover, contemporary writing from Jane Seager TK indicates that it should be in *dissenting* meaning with men, so "a thing associated with *man*, that starts with *w*, but which is the opposite of *man*". We thus write it as m₃^w with the letter on the right to indicate it is in opposition to the characterical word. 1. **Mere.** Timothy Bright says that *mere* should derive from either *very* or *mix*. I am not sure what meaning would align with "mix", however *mere* (as in small or least) could be viewed as being dissenting with *very*. I would likely prefer to make it have consenting meaning with *lean*, but for demonstration purposes, I'll go with dissenting with *very* which is w₁₁ (it turns out he also doesn't keep all letters of the alphabet distinct). Again, we put the first letter on the right of the characterical word, and get w₁₁^m. Thus all together, we end up writing essentially this:

a₉ the w₃₀·s a ^sp₁₂, and a₉ the m₃·s and m₃^w·s w₁₁^m p₁₂·er·s.

## Don't sweat the punctuation Characterie has only one punctuation mark which is used to denote any pause in speech. As there is no distinction in spoken English between different punctuation marks, this is sufficient to record most meaning. We'll indicate that pause with a period. Similarly capitalization is just ignored.

a₉ the w₃₀·s a ^sp₁₂. and a₉ the m₃·s and m₃^w·s w₁₁^m p₁₂·er·s.

## Additional Tricks I won't get into detail here, but one of the areas that Characterie invests heavily in is additional tricks to avoid writing repeating words. This is valuable in Characterie since reducing words down to their Characterical roots increases the chance you are writing the same word twice. In this case, since *woman* derives from *man*, the system allows you to attach the *w* to the particle *and* rather than to a second copy of *man*. There are many such tricks that are, again, unique to Characterie, but we'll need to get deeper into the system to actually learn them.

a₉ the w₃₀·s a ^sp₁₂. and a₉ the m₃·s and^w w₁₁^m p₁₂·er·s.

## Write it in the proper characters This may seem like you don't save much space at all, but remember we are still inefficiently writing this in the normal latin alphabet. Once you also learn the symbols of Characterie, which are designed to write exactly these things, this becomes much more compact. !["All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."](./principles/all_the_world_repeat.svg) !!!

A note on how the book was made

To make figures like the above, I actually wrote code which displays the Characterie given strings similar to the above. Indeed, for simplicity, I allowed it to take one step back, and any Characterical word is allowed to be spelled out. So that figure was made by rendering the following string:

all .the world-s .a S>play . .and all .the man-s .and>W very>M play-er-s .

# Summary So that is how Characterie works in a nutshell. There is still a lot to learn, and many details to work out, but to summarize, the flow is: 1. Write common words (particles) with special symbols. 2. Separate endings and reduce all words to root words. . Write any characterical word with it's own symbol. 4. Derive the remaining words from one of the characterical words either with consenting or dissenting meanings. This means that you need to always have the meanings of words in mind! This is quite distinct from later shorthand systems where you can write any word that you hear, and gives writing in Characterie a unique feeling---that you are always thinking in terms of similarity and differences from a small reduced vocabulary. # Exercises **Exercise 1.** Suppose we have a vocabulary of the following words: ``` none abound about bare beast case cave defend delight erect err feed field ``` Which word would you use as the base for as associated meaning for the following words, state if it is consenting or dissenting: 1. offense 2. build 3. exact 4. regarding 5. around 6. disgust 7. monster 8. meadow 9. eat 10. mouth !!!

**Solution.**

This requires you to think about what each word means, an then picking the word which is similar or opposite to each of these. There are potentially many solutions, so these are just a few possible choices, along with the full way to write it for your reference. 1. **defend**, *dissenting* --> defend^o 2. **erect**, *consenting* --> ^berect 3. **about**, *dissenting* --> about^e 4. **about**, *consenting* --> ^rabout·ing 5. **about**, *consenting* --> ^aabout 6. **delight**, *dissenting* --> delight^d 7. **beast**, *consenting* --> ^mbeast 8. **field**, *consenting* --> ^mfield 9. **feed**, *consenting* --> ^efeed 10. **feed**, *consenting* --> ^mfeed Notice that words can be used in many ways (for instance this example used three different meanings of the word *about*), and as different parts of speech (like when *feed* was used both for *eat* and *mouth*).

-------- **Exercise 2.** Let's try to pretend we are Timothy Bright, and come to understand the system better by trying to rebuild it ourselves, in minerature. Suppose English is made up of only the 25 most common nouns. These are, in order with most common in upper left, and listed in reading order: ``` none time person year way day thing man world life hand part child eye woman place work week case point government company number group problem fact ``` We want to pick *as few of these as possible* of these to be our characterical words. Which do you pick, and how do you represent the rest of the words? There is not a correct single answer here, and depends a lot on what you feel are strong consenting and dissenting associations. !!!

**Solution.**

For this, we need to think of all the other words *each word* can represent, and go from there. So, let's start by listing what each word can represent in the consenting sense. This is a bit subjective, so your list may be different. * **Time.** d: *day*, w: *week*, y:*year* * **Person.** c: *child*, m: *man*, w: *woman* * **Year.** * **Way.** * **Day.** * **Thing.** * **Man.** * **World.** p: *place* * **Life.** p: *person* * **Hand.** * **Part.** e: *eye*, h: *hand* * **Child.** * **Eye.** * **Woman.** * **Place.** w:*world* * **Work.** c:*company* * **Week.** * **Case.** * **Point.** * **Government.** * **Company.** * **Number.** * **Group.** c:*company*, g:*government* * **Problem.** * **Fact.** p:*point* Words like *thing* present an interesting case. Could a *hand* be an *h-thing* or the *world* be a *w-thing*? Perhaps, and if there really were only 25 things in the world, it would work. However, most of the time, there will be just too many options. We would like each thing to be pretty unambiguous. I think that a *m-person* is pretty likely to mean *man*. Additionally, it is worth noting that this is not a symmetrical as a relationship. I can easily envision a *c-group* being a *company*, I cannot envision a *g-company* being a *group* since a company is a kind of group, but not vise versa. This was only the consenting meanings, what about dissenting? This is a bit more subtle, but here is what I've come up with. * **Time.** * **Person.** * **Year.** * **Way.** * **Day.** * **Thing.** * **Man.** w:*woman* * **World.** * **Life.** t:*thing*, w:*work* * **Hand.** * **Part.** g:*group* * **Child.** m:*man*, w:*woman* * **Eye.** * **Woman.** m:*man* * **Place.** * **Work.** l:*life* * **Week.** * **Case.** * **Point.** * **Government.** * **Company.** * **Number.** * **Group.** p:*part* * **Problem.** * **Fact.** These can be often times quite fraught, in my experience, with opinions. For instance, I've chosen to reflect here the *man*/*woman* dichotomy as it is commonly present in people's minds, regardless of how it may or may not reflect the actual status of the world. Similarly for representing *work* and *life* in opposition. Now, on these two lists there are some words that never occur on the right hand side, they cannot be defined in terms of others on the list. They are: * **Time.** * **Way.** * **Case.** * **Number.** * **Problem.** * **Fact.** These *must* be on our list if we want them to be representable, so all of these are the first six members of our characterical words. Most of these (*way*, *case*, *number*, and *problem*), bring in no other words, however *time* brings with it *day*, *week*, and *year*, and *fact* brings in *point*. So we have the start of our dictionary of words. * **time** * year = ^ytime * **way** * day = ^dtime * week = ^wtime * **case** * point = ^pfact * **number** * **problem** * **fact** From here, I'm going to start bringing in words that bring in lots of others. For instance *person* brings in *man*, *woman*, and *child* all as consenting meanings, and *group* brings in *company* and *government* both as consenting, along with *part* as dissenting. The word *life* also has potential, bringing in *person* as consenting, and *work* and *thing* as dissenting, but I'm choosing to include person already, so there is less reason to bring in *life* at this moment. Thus our current dictionary is: * **time** * **person** * year = ^ytime * **way** * day = ^dtime * man = ^mperson * part = group^p * child = ^cperson * woman = ^wperson * week = ^wtime * **case** * point = ^pfact * governmet = ^ggroup * company = ^cgroup * **number** * **group** * **problem** * **fact** This leaves *thing*, *world*, *life*, *hand*, *eye*, *place*, and *work* left to represent. If we add in the word *part*, that brings in both *hand* and *eye*, and if we bring in *place* that brings in *world*, and if we bring in *life* that brings in *thing* and *work* as both dissenting. These are somewhat overlapping, but I see no better way, which leads to the full dictionary: * **time** * **person** = ^plife * year = ^ytime * **way** * day = ^dtime * thing = life^t * man = ^mperson * world = ^wplace * **life** * hand = ^hpart * **part** = group^p * child = ^cperson * eye = ^epart * woman = ^wperson * **place** * work = life^w * week = ^wtime * **case** * point = ^pfact * governmet = ^ggroup * company = ^cgroup * **number** * **group** = part^g * **problem** * **fact** A few notes: 1. Some words have multiple ways to write them, and that is a good thing! You'll see as you go on that flexibility in representing concepts will let reduce the ammount you write when you have many words in a row that derive from the same characterical root. 2. Notice that this looks nothing like the most common words. Indeed, we see that we selected more from the least common words than we did from the more common words. Uncommon words often express specific concepts which are not closely related to other more common expressions, so if you want to be able to express them, you need to include them. Extremely common words, like *thing*, are often so generic that there is no clear associated meanings. For these reasons, selecting the perfect list is a complex balancing game, and one that Timothy Bright, as the creator of Characterie, needed to play over the entire vocabulary of the English language! So we see that we can create a tiny version of Characterie from the first 25 nouns, and have 11 characteral words. Other opinions on what good consenting and dissenting meanings are will give different dictionaries. Can you find a better one than me?

-------- **Exercise 3.** Go back to the single figure showing Characterie above. It is written top-to-bottom, left-to-right. You will, of course, not be able to read it, however it is an excellent, and challenging, exercise to see how much of the theory you can figure out. Some questions you could answer, in order of increasing difficulty: 1. How does Characterie represent the ending *·s*? 2. How does Characterie represent the ending *·er*? 3. How does Characterie represent a pause in speech? 4. How does Characterie represent consenting and dissenting meaning? 5. How does Characterie write the letters *m*, *s*, and *w*? !!!

**Solution.**

1. Since we know the writing order is top-to-bottom, and then left-to-right, we can locate the characters that represent our words that end in *·s* (namely *world's*, *men*, and *players*). ![The words, "world's," "men," and "players."](./principles/all_the_world_s.svg) These words all have dots to the right of them, so we can conclude that it is probably written with a dot to the right (and it is). 2. Similarly, we can go back to the word *players*, as it is the only word that contains *·er*. If we peel off the dot for *·s*, we get this: ![The word, "player."](./principles/all_the_world_player.svg) and we see that it has two dots, and is the only word with that feature, so that might be it (and it is). 3. Since we know the writing order is top-to-bottom, and then left-to-right, we can locate the two pauses after the fifth word, and at the end. In both places, we see single dots like a period below the word, so that must be it (and it is). 4. The only word with consenting meaning is *stage*. There are two words with descenting meaning: *women* (which is represented as *w* attached to *and*) and *mere* (which is represented as *m* attached to *very*). If we count the words, we see that they must be these three characters. ![The words, "stage," "women," and "mere."](./principles/all_the_world_words.svg) We see the consenting one has the center part with something on the left, and the dissention two have the center character with something on the right. So, it must match what we did in text: you add a letter to the left for consenting, and add a letter to the right for dissenting. 5. Given the answer to question four, we can guess that those additional symbols must be *s*, *w* and *m*. These are: ![s](./alphabet/s.svg) ![w](./alphabet/w.svg) ![m](./alphabet/m.svg)

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