I had a dream this morning in which I was back in my primary school library. Oh, the hours I spend there as a kid, poring over the huge hard-bound collections of “Peanuts” comics. I wanted so badly to be able to draw like Charles M. Schultz.
I wrote to Schultz once, asking for a pencil sketch — because that would have to be an original. I got a nice letter back from an assistant with some copies enclosed. It wasn’t quite what I wanted, but I still cherished it.
Fast-forward to today, where I can find a piece of work that I like and buy it, and before I’ve even read it I’m already exchanging quips on Twitter with the author. The future is a very cool place to live in some respects, and that breaking down of the wall between creative people and readers is definitely one of them.
The last few days I’ve been conversing with someone about Gregg Shorthand (sparing my beloved from having to hear remarks like “Sorry, I habitually put hatches through those parentheses because in shorthand they would mean something else if I didn’t”). Looking up some resources, I stumbled across these again — examples of Schultz’s familiarity with Gregg.
Woodstock was always my favourite character, and I tried over and over to draw him in Schultz’s unique, wiggly hand. Funny to think now of Woodstock acting as Snoopy’s transcriptionist, writing in Gregg:
In that strip, he wrote what Snoopy said verbatim. Schultz uses a few “officey” brief forms I tend to forget about (abbreviations like J-M for “gentlemen”), but his outlines aren’t very precise: the length of certain letters is too short, so “dog” is really “doc”, and “bad” is “bat”.
Here’s another:
Linus opens by saying “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night”. (Merry Crms to all nd to all a g nit.)
Since Schultz writes “all” out in full, I can do a little forensics work and deduce that he probably learned Simplified or a later form (Diamond Jubilee, Centennial, or Series 90). These later variations were easier to learn because they contained fewer abbreviation principles, but as a result require you to spell out more words in full, cutting short the speed gains the earlier forms make possible.
Linus transcribes:
Dr Santa: Ow V-U B? (“X” is a question-mark.)
A-v-b g all eer nd m luking fd to Crmas…
D u pls brng me a pru[sic] setr nd a jmp rp?
Th-ing u in advens, I reman u-sinse-ly…
G cref[sic].
So there you go. And I continue in my efforts to wrench this skill out of the Fifties and take full advantage of it.
