Joanne Ruggiero, age 9, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for her question:

When was shorthand invented?

As you know, it takes a long time to write a whole page in readable longhand, letter by letter and word by word. Naturally a lot of people thought of inventing a quicker way to do the job. In fact, somebody invented a shorthand system way back in 68 B.C., which was about 2,000 years ago. His name was Iarcus Tullius Tiro. He invented a quick way to take down the speeches of a famous Roman lecturer named Cicero. This shorthand eras for the Latin languae.

The first shorthand for the English language was invented in 1588, which was almost 400 years ago. The inventor was Timothy Bright and he dedicated his shorthand system to Queen Elizabeth I. In 1602, John Willis streamlined the letters of the alphabet and invented another system of shorthand. Nowadays we use several modern shorthand systems. The first one was invented in 1837 by Isaac Pitman. Another was invented by John Robert Gregg in 1888. Since then, several others have been invented. But Pitman shorthand and Gregg shorthand still are very popular with people who like to write fast.