{"id":15331,"date":"2013-06-07T09:41:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T13:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2013\/06\/07\/working-toward-peanuts\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:50:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:50:12","slug":"working-toward-peanuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2013\/06\/07\/working-toward-peanuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Working Toward Peanuts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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I wrote to Schultz once, asking for a pencil<\/em> 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.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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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.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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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.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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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:<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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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”.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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Here’s another:<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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Linus opens by saying “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night”. (Merry Crms to all nd to all a g nit.<\/em>)<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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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.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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Linus transcribes:<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
Dr Santa: Ow V-U B?<\/em> (“X” is a question-mark.)<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
A-v-b g all eer nd m luking fd to Crmas…<\/em><\/div>\n<\/p>\n
D u pls brng me a pru<\/em>[sic] setr nd a jmp rp?<\/em><\/div>\n<\/p>\n
Th-ing u in advens, I reman u-sinse-ly…<\/em><\/div>\n<\/p>\n
G cref<\/em>[sic].<\/em><\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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So there you go. And I continue in my efforts to wrench this skill out of the Fifties and take full advantage of it.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}