Teeline is a shorthand system accepted by the National Council for the Training of Journalists

National Council for the Training of Journalists

The National Council for the Training of Journalists was founded in 1951 as an organisation to oversee the training of journalists for the newspaper industry in the United Kingdom and is now playing a role in the wider media.-Purpose:...

, an organisation for training journalists in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. It was developed in 1968 by James Hill, a teacher of Pitman Shorthand

Pitman Shorthand

Pitman shorthand is a system of shorthand for the English language developed by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman , who first presented it in 1837. Like most systems of shorthand, it is a phonetic system; the symbols do not represent letters, but rather sounds, and words are, for the most part, written...

. It is adaptable to a variety of languages but is mainly used within the Commonwealth

Commonwealth of Nations

The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...

, though it works in a variety of Germanic languages

Germanic languages

The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...

 (including German and Swedish). It was created so that the basic alphabet can be quickly learned, and from then on all it requires is practice. Speeds of up to 150 words per minute are possible. It is common for people to create their own word groupings, increasing their speed.

Writing style

It is a streamlined way to transcribe the spoken word quickly by removing unnecessary letters from words and making the letters themselves faster to write. Vowels are often removed when they are not the first or last letter of a word, and silent letter

Silent letter

In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation...

s are also ignored. Common prefixes, suffixes, and word pairings (such as "sh" and "ing") are reduced to single symbols. The symbols themselves are derived from the old cursive forms of the letter and the unnecessary parts are again stripped leaving only the core of the letter left. Unlike Pitman, Teeline is a spelling based system, as opposed to one based on phonetics. The advantage being it can be learned straightforwardly.

Alphabet

It differs from many shorthand systems by basing itself on the alphabet as opposed to phonetics, making it simpler to learn but also carrying the speed limitations of the alphabet when compared to other systems. However, it is common to find some phonetics spellings used. For example, ph is often just written as an f, so the word phase would be written as if it were spelt fase. This coincides with the creator's intentions of streamlining it as much as possible. As with many shorthand systems, there are few strict rules on how to write it, so it is common for users to make personal adaptations for their own use. Certain letters also have specific meanings as well as their traditional alphabetic value, as shown in the table below.

Note: there may also be some regional, dialectal, and lingual additions to these as well.

Letter	Meaning	Notes
A	auto, after, able, able to, ability	Can also be used as an outline for "Blood Group A". There is also an indicator A for words ending in "Ang", but indicators can be used for word beginnings.
B	bee Bee Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, and are known for their role in pollination and for producing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila... , be	Can also be used for "blood group B". It can also be mistaken for a number 6, so all numbers 0-99 are circled
C	Local, locals, because, (if below the line)
D	Do, Day	T & D are parallel lines, but T can be dropped in certain cases. T goes at the top of the line and D goes to the bottom.
E	Electricity	Also used as an indicator for words spelled with "eng"
F	From
G	Go, Gentleman
H	He	Written on the line, so it's not mistaken for a "P"
I	I (singular), Eye	Also used as indicator I and words spelled with "Ing"
J	None	Can be given a meaning
K	Kilo, Kind, Like
L	Letter, Lady, a lot, a lot of	Upwards L can be used as an outline for facilities. Sharp "L" used before a G,M and N, upwards L afterwards.
M	Me, May
N	Non, Nation, National, Begin, Beyond	Begin/Beyond are written below the line but Non, Nation and National are special outlines that use a special N (looking like an upside down Q). Also used in the T position to denote words ending in "ion", such as "junction".
O	Blood, bloodspot, pint of blood, or	Outline for "Blood" derived from blood groups, meaning that A, B and O can be used as an outline for each blood group. Also used as an indicator for words spelt with "ong" and "ology", so sociology would be written as "S,C, disjoined O".
P	Page, Pence, Police	Can be blended with H to form word groupings with "At The post office" or "in the post", "In the Past"
Q	Queen, question, equal
R	Are, authority
S	South
T	to, too
U	You	Indicator used for words ending in "ung" and beginning in "un"
V	Very, Evidence, evidently	"Evidence" and "Evidently" are written below the line
X	Accident, accidentally	Can also be used for "Christ Christ Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach... ", "Christian Christian A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament... ", etc. Cf. X for "Christ"
Y	Your, Why
Z	Zoo	Can be replaced with an S
SH	shall, shell	represented as a longhand letter S and can be used in words like "SPecial" or "social".
CH	Chair(man/woman)
TH	The, Thousand(s)	Can be used in word groupings like "At The", "in The", etc, by putting the "At" or "in" in the T position.

Writing technique

Words in Teeline are written by connecting letters together, as opposed to writing each individually . This allows for a faster writing speed. However, in abbreviations, letters can be written singularly.