About Diamond Jubilee Gregg Shorthand
Eighth edition
(1963-1977)

     The Diamond Jubilee Series is the result of the ever-shifting focus of stenography onto the office from the courtroom.  This edition marked the seventy-fifth year since Gregg published his shorthand in 1888.  Diamond Jubilee is pretty easy to learn, with fewer principles than Simplified.  It, however, is slightly slower than Simplified in practice.  The emphasis on this series was ease of learning.  The researchers of the Gregg Division worked to eliminate the less frequent words and phrases to be found in Simplified.

     Brief forms were vastly shaved.  In all, there were 129 brief forms representing 148 meanings.  The Gregg Division removed the following brief forms from Gregg Shorthand: agent, all, allow, always, among, any, automobile, been, bill, circle, conclude, conclusion, confidence, confident, consider, consideration, correct, cover, desire, did, date, deliver, direct, else, enable, end, enough, etc., future, go, got, he, house, individual, instance, instant, let, letter, like, likewise, long, keep, matter, more, necessary, never, please, property, prosecute, purchase, refer, reference, remainder, remember, remit, return, right, write, ship, side, stand, then, unable, usual, want, week, weak, and wonder.  They modified or lengthened the following brief forms: work, advertise, suggest, satisfy, satisfactory, request, experience, object, and regard.  The words manufacture and short were added to the list, even though short was originally a much shorter disjoined word-beginning.

     Phrases that were found not often applied were tossed.

     Word beginnings and endings that were found applicable to only a very small group of words were eliminated.

     Several principles—like the orientation of o before r and l, as well as the formation of the past tense and the omission of t and d at the end of words—were eliminated.

     Butchered as this version may be, it was found to be good progress for the speed of learning so that the student could more quickly reach his speed-building program. Though few users of this system actually made it past 175 words per minute, it was still capable of an admirable speed.  This series is best suitable for the learner who simply wants to use shorthand without too much training.

     However, there were expert versions of this series.  The Gregg Division published books on expert shortcuts, as well as technical and medical shortcuts.  The expert shortcuts were almost a revival of Anniversary's shortcuts, minus several principles.  This system was not guilty of oversimplification because of its possibilities with special forms available from the Gregg division.

     When this version was nearing its end, shorthand was becoming even more unpopular.  When this version died in 1977, so did the official Gregg Shorthand magazine, Today's Secretary.  Perhaps it was seen as a wasted effort to continue publishing the magazine with the next and unpopular series, Series 90.