About Series 90 Gregg Shorthand
Ninth edition
(1978-1987)

     This version of shorthand was even simpler than the ones before it.  Experts felt and McGraw-Hill realized later that it might have gotten too simple.  By this time, shorthand had become fairly rare and this version pushed it even farther into that category.  Users of it rarely could ever break 100 words per minute.

     Several principles were removed and great emphasis was placed on making each brief form represent fewer words.  Therefore, for instance, doctor and during (d r in all other versions) had to be differenciated from each other.  During was changed to the awkward d u r [dot].  By was now written b i.

     Since shorthand was already suffering the problem of application in the modern world, the fact that its results could easily be beaten with alphanumeric systems learnable in a day caused Series 90 to turn the business world off to Gregg Shorthand.

     The system had already lost its prestige and application in the court reporting world to the stenotype machine.  It seemed as if shorthand had no where to be applied.  Employers were already typing their own letters; secretaries were already using dictaphones to record dictation and type it at their own paces. The Gregg magazine, Today's Secretary, ended its publication around the beginning of Series 90.

     This series was the least practical and most basic form of shorthand since the 1893 publication, even though the system was still relatively difficult. The brief forms—advertise, business, between, big, gone, great, how, merchandise, morning, must, purpose, put, railroad, shall, situation, such, those, upon, use, why, and yet—were removed from the brief form list (from Diamond Jubilee). Any, executive, Ms., opinion, responsible, and usual were added to the list.

     The authors of Gregg Shorthand were not pleased with its decreasing popularity. Even though this was inevitable regardless of the simplicity of the system, they created a new series—Gregg Shorthand Centennial Edition.