Hi everybody! A while ago, I did a post on learning Teeline, which was really fun to write. Since then, I’ve learned a lot more, and wanted to share with you in the best way I know how: by curating my own Teeline dictionary!
It was important to me to create a dictionary that was easily searchable, because so much out there is image-only, and you have to manually scour resources. I want this to be a resource that is easy and available!
So far the dictionary contains 674 words. I have done my best to show multiple ways of expressing words (specifically with the upward/downward ‘L’), but keep in mind that there might be a different way to write any given word that’s equally valid.
If you have any requests, suggestions, corrections, or general comments, please let me know! I would be happy to include them in the dictionary. I intend this to be a living project, and I want it to grow and evolve to be the best (and most useful) it can be.
Hi everybody! I’ve updated the post to include 40 new words (including the 5 requested so far), 5 fixed mistakes, and 1 additional way to spell “one.” Enjoy!
Lee, you would write bad, bed, bid, bod, bud, bide, bode, bade, etc the same way, since you leave out the vowels.. Usually the context makes it obvious which word is meant,, but if you think it won’t be obvious later, you can always add a vowel–with this word it may be best to just write it over the d part.
Any chance u can do a sentence “shorthand is better than sex” it’s for my missus. She is doing journalism masters and she hates (lmao) it so much. I wanna put it on a t shirt or mug for a joke Xmas presrnt
Hi John! This is great! I put something together in vector format, so hopefully it looks extra nice on a shiny mug or somesuch. If you do get this printed, please share a picture! I’d love to see it!
There are a few different ways to write this, mostly depending if you want to stress the “i” or the “a” at the end. I tend to prefer the full vowel “A” to indicate that the a has a friend, but the “a” indicator or “i” indicator would both also be correct.
I’ve made a quick image of all of the words you’ve requested (which are GREAT, by the way! Lots of delicious corner cases). They will get updated into the dictionary eventually when I have a bit more free time.
Hi! Your dictionary is really helpful. Im still new to Teeline. My speed is really slow like 16 WPM with mistakes. Could u give some tips. It would be really helpful. Thanks!
Btw why did u choose to write “MY” like that in teeline?
This is really helpful. I have confusion though. Why did u choose to write “my” like that in Teeline? Isn’t that “r” next to “m”. Also, since im new to this, could u give some tips on how to get better since im still pretty bad( 16WPM with mistakes)?Thanks
Here are some facts which should help:
– The “i” indicator can be written in either the up or down position; whichever gives the best join.
– The size of each character can tell you a lot about it. Indicators are tiny. Full vowels are a little bigger. Consonants are generally pretty big and blocky. Prefixes and suffixes are a bit smaller than their associated consonants.
– You generally won’t see an explicit “r” after an “m”… Usually, the two are combined into an “MR” blend (a stretched out “m”). See e.g. “thermometer.”
hey, just wondering how you’d go about writing very “sous” type words, like jesus / suspicious/ subconscious. i feel like writing out the actual word would be more productive in these particular cases since the TL version seems longer
The answer depends if there’s an “sh” sound in there or not… “Jesus” will be spelled out “j s u s” (with the “u” indicator). Suspicious and subconscious both use the “sh” character (“s u s p sh s”, “s b cn sh s”). I’ve added all three to the dictionary so you can see what I mean.
Hopefully both of those are easier in Teeline than just writing it all the way out!
I think you’re wrong on a couple words with double letters like room. I think it should be more like rom and not rm because of the vowel rules and if it were rm, rm could be confused with rim or ram.
I’ve seen a few places on the Internet that recommend keeping vowels for double letters, but generally it seems to be personal preference.
The Teeline Gold Course Book (ed. Bowers) doesn’t say anything about double vowels. Teeline Fast (Ann Dix) says “When double vowels begin a word, use either the first vowel only or the one that has the most dominant sound. When double vowels end a word, write the one which has the most dominant sound.”
My assumption would be that they imply double vowels in the middle of words follow the same rules as vowels otherwise.
That being said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with explicitly including vowels. There are lots of correct ways to write things in Teeline.
Thanks so much for this, I have started to learn Teeline Shorthand and as Lee & Jim have mentioned, this is so helpful. When possible if you have a chance, could you add word groupings i.e. to the, of the, I will etc.
I’ve come across an interesting old book Scientific Shorthand, by Thomas Jasper Caton (c) 1900.
Hi there! Word groupings are coming… eventually. Unfortunately for my Teeline dictionary, I’ve been really overwhelmed with life things. It hasn’t completely dropped off my radar though. It may just be a while.
Hello, I love your site! It has made learning much easier and I thank you. Can you write ‘squeeze’ and ‘freeze,’ I think I have it, but writing the ‘z’ feels awkward so I’m not sure it’s right. Also I’m confused, why is ‘nation’ not written as ‘n’ with the symbol for ‘tion’? And why not add the ‘rl’ to ‘general,’ is it just a personal preference?
Glad you’re finding it useful. To your points:
– ‘z’ should always be replaced by an ‘s’ except at the beginning of a word. So ‘squeeze’ and ‘freeze’ should be SQS and FRS, respectively (with the FR blend).
– ‘nation’ uses the NN blend (a really tall N), which is easier to write than N-tion.
– You’ll find a lot of words have some letters dropped here and there. That happens when there’s a well-recognized abbreviation to a word, i.e., ‘gen.’ is an established abbreviation for ‘general’. In this particular instance, GN is the accepted spelling of ‘general’ by consensus of the Teeline community, but there are other words that do tend to be personal preference.
Hey! I’m getting to the point where I’m trying to learn more suffixes- especially ones “F”- it’s so awkward to attach sometimes? How would you write “diversified?
Glad you’re finding it useful. 🙂 I’ve uploaded the dictionary to include those two; I also noticed that I’d “misspelled” “every”, so thanks for inadvertently calling that to my attention!
Thank you for this resource, it is most helpful. Can you please tell me how to write ‘obviously’? I find that the final ‘y’ indicator is nearly impossible to write fast or clearly after the ‘s’, so I just drop the ‘s’ entirely and write O-B-V and the y indicator (like in ‘every’). Is that ok? Thanks!
Hi! Such a dictionary was much needed. It is really helpful! Thankyou so much!
I am currently learning blends of ‘x’. And it says that if a word begins with ‘ex’ we don’t write the ‘e’ indicator. Fine! But what about the case when a word starts with ‘ax’, ‘ox’ or ‘ux’ like in ‘axes’, ‘oxen’ and ‘uxorious’? How do you write them?
Thank you so much for sharing your experience and journey with Teeline!! I am also learning at my own pace, and agree with the fact that repetition and practice is the best way to anchor knowledge. Also thank you for your dictionary!! So useful! I speak several languages and I practice and write Teeline in other languages (can’t help it, my mind wonders happily practicing combinations of letters into words) Blessings
Thank you! I am just starting out, and this is super helpful.
Ditto what Lee says. My first day looking at Teeline.
I love TeeLine but am fairly new to it.
This has made it so much quicker to use in the real world.
Thank you 🙂
Hello what a great post, wish I’d found it earlier. Can you include
– engagement
– implementation
Please?
This is really helpful. Could you include
-Yesterday
-National
-Health
Hi everybody! I’ve updated the post to include 40 new words (including the 5 requested so far), 5 fixed mistakes, and 1 additional way to spell “one.” Enjoy!
Would there be a difference between for example, bad and bed
Lee, you would write bad, bed, bid, bod, bud, bide, bode, bade, etc the same way, since you leave out the vowels.. Usually the context makes it obvious which word is meant,, but if you think it won’t be obvious later, you can always add a vowel–with this word it may be best to just write it over the d part.
Any chance u can do a sentence “shorthand is better than sex” it’s for my missus. She is doing journalism masters and she hates (lmao) it so much. I wanna put it on a t shirt or mug for a joke Xmas presrnt
Hi John! This is great! I put something together in vector format, so hopefully it looks extra nice on a shiny mug or somesuch. If you do get this printed, please share a picture! I’d love to see it!
how to write a word ” wanted”
I’ve updated the dictionary to include “wanted”! Thanks for your comment. 🙂
please could you teach me how to write “saskia”. i need to put it in my sketch book for college but cant find it anywhere
There are a few different ways to write this, mostly depending if you want to stress the “i” or the “a” at the end. I tend to prefer the full vowel “A” to indicate that the a has a friend, but the “a” indicator or “i” indicator would both also be correct.
Can anyone help, I’m looking for the following:
Thanks! (:
thirty
bursting
determined
improving
deserve
announced
survival
campaign
chapter
Hi Jess!
I’ve made a quick image of all of the words you’ve requested (which are GREAT, by the way! Lots of delicious corner cases). They will get updated into the dictionary eventually when I have a bit more free time.
Thank you so much!
Hi! Your dictionary is really helpful. Im still new to Teeline. My speed is really slow like 16 WPM with mistakes. Could u give some tips. It would be really helpful. Thanks!
Btw why did u choose to write “MY” like that in teeline?
This is really helpful. I have confusion though. Why did u choose to write “my” like that in Teeline? Isn’t that “r” next to “m”. Also, since im new to this, could u give some tips on how to get better since im still pretty bad( 16WPM with mistakes)?Thanks
Hi Rania!
Glad it’s helping! For tips, you might want to check out my earlier post about learning Teeline.
http://realerthinks.com/teeline-for-the-curious-a-story-of-learning-things-because-i-can/
Good question about “my.”
Here are some facts which should help:
– The “i” indicator can be written in either the up or down position; whichever gives the best join.
– The size of each character can tell you a lot about it. Indicators are tiny. Full vowels are a little bigger. Consonants are generally pretty big and blocky. Prefixes and suffixes are a bit smaller than their associated consonants.
– You generally won’t see an explicit “r” after an “m”… Usually, the two are combined into an “MR” blend (a stretched out “m”). See e.g. “thermometer.”
Hi! I was wondering how you’d write “uncertainty” in teeline
Added!
hey, just wondering how you’d go about writing very “sous” type words, like jesus / suspicious/ subconscious. i feel like writing out the actual word would be more productive in these particular cases since the TL version seems longer
Hi Saf!
Great question!
The answer depends if there’s an “sh” sound in there or not… “Jesus” will be spelled out “j s u s” (with the “u” indicator). Suspicious and subconscious both use the “sh” character (“s u s p sh s”, “s b cn sh s”). I’ve added all three to the dictionary so you can see what I mean.
Hopefully both of those are easier in Teeline than just writing it all the way out!
Thanks for this!
Can you add “avoid” and “criticism” for me?
Cheers!
Added!
I think you’re wrong on a couple words with double letters like room. I think it should be more like rom and not rm because of the vowel rules and if it were rm, rm could be confused with rim or ram.
Hi there!
I’ve seen a few places on the Internet that recommend keeping vowels for double letters, but generally it seems to be personal preference.
The Teeline Gold Course Book (ed. Bowers) doesn’t say anything about double vowels. Teeline Fast (Ann Dix) says “When double vowels begin a word, use either the first vowel only or the one that has the most dominant sound. When double vowels end a word, write the one which has the most dominant sound.”
My assumption would be that they imply double vowels in the middle of words follow the same rules as vowels otherwise.
That being said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with explicitly including vowels. There are lots of correct ways to write things in Teeline.
Thanks so much for this, I have started to learn Teeline Shorthand and as Lee & Jim have mentioned, this is so helpful. When possible if you have a chance, could you add word groupings i.e. to the, of the, I will etc.
I’ve come across an interesting old book Scientific Shorthand, by Thomas Jasper Caton (c) 1900.
Kind Regards
C
Hi there! Word groupings are coming… eventually. Unfortunately for my Teeline dictionary, I’ve been really overwhelmed with life things. It hasn’t completely dropped off my radar though. It may just be a while.
Oh and that book sounds super interesting! I’ll have to check it out.
Hello, I love your site! It has made learning much easier and I thank you. Can you write ‘squeeze’ and ‘freeze,’ I think I have it, but writing the ‘z’ feels awkward so I’m not sure it’s right. Also I’m confused, why is ‘nation’ not written as ‘n’ with the symbol for ‘tion’? And why not add the ‘rl’ to ‘general,’ is it just a personal preference?
Hi Amira!
Glad you’re finding it useful. To your points:
– ‘z’ should always be replaced by an ‘s’ except at the beginning of a word. So ‘squeeze’ and ‘freeze’ should be SQS and FRS, respectively (with the FR blend).
– ‘nation’ uses the NN blend (a really tall N), which is easier to write than N-tion.
– You’ll find a lot of words have some letters dropped here and there. That happens when there’s a well-recognized abbreviation to a word, i.e., ‘gen.’ is an established abbreviation for ‘general’. In this particular instance, GN is the accepted spelling of ‘general’ by consensus of the Teeline community, but there are other words that do tend to be personal preference.
I got it, you cleared a lot of the confusion. Thank you so much!
Hey! I’m getting to the point where I’m trying to learn more suffixes- especially ones “F”- it’s so awkward to attach sometimes? How would you write “diversified?
Thank you so much for this incredible resource!
Hi Thomas!
I’m so glad you’re finding the dictionary helpful. 🙂
I’ve updated to include the word “diversified”. You could also write it with the F in the downwards position (not shown).
F is definitely a tricky letter. Best of luck to you.
Hi, this is so helpful! How would you write “everything” and “everyone”? Thanks so much for making this!
Hi Cat!
Glad you’re finding it useful. 🙂 I’ve uploaded the dictionary to include those two; I also noticed that I’d “misspelled” “every”, so thanks for inadvertently calling that to my attention!
Thank you for this resource, it is most helpful. Can you please tell me how to write ‘obviously’? I find that the final ‘y’ indicator is nearly impossible to write fast or clearly after the ‘s’, so I just drop the ‘s’ entirely and write O-B-V and the y indicator (like in ‘every’). Is that ok? Thanks!
Hi! Such a dictionary was much needed. It is really helpful! Thankyou so much!
I am currently learning blends of ‘x’. And it says that if a word begins with ‘ex’ we don’t write the ‘e’ indicator. Fine! But what about the case when a word starts with ‘ax’, ‘ox’ or ‘ux’ like in ‘axes’, ‘oxen’ and ‘uxorious’? How do you write them?
And also how do you write x with f like f+x and x+f?
Hello.
what is ‘another’? I cannot figure how to combine the ‘an’ and ‘other’, thanks,
Hi Addie, thank you so much for doing this! Could you please add “probably” to your next update?
Addie, this is so awesome! I’ve got some words I’d love to see added to your next update. Business/tech journalists will thank you. 🙂
process/processes, share, explain, discover, insights, partners, refine, growth, strategy, message, investment, tech/technology, report, earnings, feedback, analysis/analyze, market, buyer, competitor, company…
and anything else you can think of that relates to biz/tech!
Thanks so much for all your hard work on this!
Hi
I’m trying to learn science stuff (not my forte).
Do you have the shortform for things such as molecule? Solute? I mean, if you want to try spectrophotometer, I’ll let you!
Thanks for your help. I learnt Teeline decades ago and am somewhat rusty, but it’s so useful for note taking (and confounding the unknowing)!
This is really good. I have taken English’s 100 most frequent words, the graphics here and turned them into flash cards in Anki.
Just would like to know whether we can add some words into your dictionary to expand our T-line dictionary broader?
I come from a nursing aged care background and some of the T-lines words will be very useful if this is a searchable dictionary.
hey just wondering why war and our are the same and how to tell the difference?
Thank you so much for sharing your experience and journey with Teeline!! I am also learning at my own pace, and agree with the fact that repetition and practice is the best way to anchor knowledge. Also thank you for your dictionary!! So useful! I speak several languages and I practice and write Teeline in other languages (can’t help it, my mind wonders happily practicing combinations of letters into words) Blessings