EasyScript Express: Learn To Take Fast Notes in a Matter of Hours,   ISBN:9781893726000

Customer Rating: 

I felt that the book gave a lot of important information on how to train ones self on the basic learning of speed writing. I wish I had gotten the whole package, with the tape, to really get the process down.

Customer Rating: 

This has been very helpful in learning the FastNotes technique. I don't know about a 'matter of hours,' but certainly the technique is a good one, and I will (with a few changes) incorporate this into my own technique. Editing on this book was a little iffy - quite a few glaring errors - but easily corrected. Worth the money and worth my time.

Customer Rating: 

As an attorney with no formal training in shorthand, I found the EasyScript Express book very intuitive and helpful in my daily practice. Reading a chapter a day I was able to focus on learning just a few new concepts each day and implementing them right away. This is a much simpler process than the formal shorthand method, and for that, I am grateful.

Customer Rating: 

The Good:

The EasyScript (ES) speedwriting system does NOT require cursive writing--so all of us hand printers out there can easily use it.

It is also a forward-moving speedwriting system, you write and move on--no constantly going backwards to underline letters or place tick marks, as is done with some other speedwriting systems.

You can use it on your computer or PDA.

Fairly easy to learn, and the rules are clear enough that compared to other systems, you can still transcribe your notes after a longer period of time has passed than you can with other speedwriting/shorthand systems.

The Bad:

Almost half of the book consists of empty note-taking pages. Worse, they are on the LEFT side, which, considering that the majority of people are RIGHT-handed, is not conducive to most people actually using the book as a workbook.

There are some typographical errors and omissions in the book--one glaring one is using a symbol that looks like a large backwards "6" to indicate "Paragraph" on page 59--where this key is on the keyboard, I have no idea.

The included dictionary is not of much use, since with their system you truly can figure out how to abbreviate any word--what would have been much more useful is a dictionary of general brief forms (not necessarily business-related either) for you to memorize.

As to the method itself, if this is your first try at speedwriting, you could do a lot worse. If, on the other hand, you have any previous experience with another letter-based speedwriting system you will probably want to tweak the ES system and/or combine it with abbreviations you're already using if some of the ES concepts don't make sense to you.

Bottom line: Decent system. The book is 'way overpriced (even at the Amazon price), considering how little actual content/instruction is in the book, so go in with a friend or buy used.

Customer Rating: 

The system itself seems to be a good one, and EasyScript Express an acceptably effective way to learn it.

Here's how the book is broken down:
5pp Introduction
8pp Lesson 1: Simple words
7pp Lesson 2: Prefix words
10pp Lesson 3: Suffix words
11pp Lesson 4: Prefix/Suffix words
6pp Lesson 5: Compound words
2pp Easyscript Overview
2pp Adapting to EasyScript
8pp Answers to the exercises
45pp EasyScript Dictionary

The remaining 60 of the total 164 pages (most of the left-hand pages of all the chapters) are lined "notes" pages presumably for the student to practice in, leaving 104pp total of actual content. Of the content, at least 50% is lists of vocabulary for the learner to transcribe into EasyScript.

This would be a fine basic workbook for a class taught by an instructor that was available to explain things to you. As a self-training book it's rather lean. Ideally I'd want an introductory book like this to have perhaps triple the content (At least fill in those "Notes" pages). I'd want a lot more explanation of the reasoning behind the design, some anecdotes and examples of what people have been using ES for in their lives, examples that show it being used for something other than dictated business letters...something to "humanize" it a bit more.

I'd also like the opportunity to review previously-learned rules, and a lot more opportunity to familiarize myself with it by reading EasyScript text, not just writing isolated words. There are seven brief business-letter transcription exercises, but that's not enough. There's little EasyScript text available on the web (and basically nothing but generic PR stuff available on the official website), so after this brief overview of the basics, my only opportunity to practice is going to be to write something out myself, hope I'm doing it more or less correctly, and practice on that.

Basically the feel of this book was "Okay, we got a couple of hours. Here are the rules, here's a list of words to practice on, now go out and use it, good luck." After going through all the exercises I kind of vaguely know the basics, but I want more. Preferably without paying a hundred dollars...