About Centennial Gregg Shorthand
Tenth Edition
(1988-Present)

     This series is the current standard of Gregg Shorthand.  It is of a more sensible difficulty than Series 90. It is essentially a revival of Diamond Jubilee with several differences.  This series brought back the idea of letting one brief form outline represent more than one word, thus the word during was brought back.

     There are 139 brief forms that represent 162 words.  The system is closer to Diamond Jubilee than any other series.  In comparison to Diamond Jubilee, a few changes were made:

     Any, convenience, direct, office, privilege, property, responsible, and usual were re-added;

     Anniversary, appropriate, communicate, equip, executive, equivalent, incorporate, insurance, Ms., product, recommend, reluctance, and reluctant were added;

     Electric, include, and program were classified as brief forms;

     How, purpose, put, shall, such, situation, those, upon, use, why, and yet were removed from the brief form list.

     The word work was changed back into its original form, r k, and several words were edited into different outlines.

     This series was probably a revival attempt by the authors of Gregg to make the Light-Line Phonography popular again after Series 90 somewhat ruined its reputation. It is unfortunate that the final textbook on Centennial Gregg Shorthand was the first one, written in 1988. This book is very much like any standard textbook from the 1980s, but it was the first Gregg Shorthand manual not to have had a platewriter writing all the outlines for it. According to one of the last platewriters who worked for the Gregg division, one of the workers there cut and pasted the outlines from older books. As a result, the outlines have clear thickness variances.

     A much more apparent difference possibly brought about by this method of production was the complete eradication of a standard for outline placement on the writing line. While this might carry on the dream of J. R. Gregg to have no position writing at all, a loss of a standard of outline placement was probably not the most advantageous change to the system.

     Business dictation was dead.  Society had, for the most part, lost interest in Gregg Shorthand by the time this edition was published.  Most high schools simply ended the Gregg Shorthand program altogether, without even giving Centennial a chance.

     Regardless of the fall of Gregg Shorthand, Centennial shorthand still is able to record speech onto paper with good accuracy and speed.  This version seems well suited for today's society, with changes like the removal of must for the modern title Ms., which is becoming commoner as times progress.  This system maintains its ease of learning and its practicality in the modern world.