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

of Journalists, an organisation for training journalists in the United Kingdom.[

1] It was developed in 1968 by James Hill,[2] a teacher of Pitman Shorthand.[1]
It is adaptable to a variety of languages but is mainly used within the Commonwe
alth, though it works in a variety of Germanic languages (including German and S
wedish). It was created so that the basic alphabet can be quickly learned, and f
rom then on all it requires is practice. Speeds of up to 150 words per minute ar
e possible.[3] It is common for people to create their own word groupings, incre
asing their speed.[1]
Teeline shorthand is a streamlined way to transcribe the spoken word quickly by
removing unnecessary letters from words and making the letters themselves faster
to write.[1] Vowels are often removed when they are not the first or last lette
r of a word, and silent letters are also ignored.[1] Common prefixes, suffixes,
and letter groupings (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.[
1] Unlike Pitman, Teeline is a spelling based system, as opposed to one based on
phonetics. The advantage is that it can be learned straightforwardly.
Teeline 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 lim
itations of the alphabet when compared to other systems.[1] However, it is commo
n to find some phonetics spellings used. For example, ph is often just written a
s an f, so the word phase would be written as if it were spelt fase. This coinci
des with the creator's intentions of streamlining it as much as possible.[1] As
with many shorthand systems, there are few strict rules on how to write it, so i
t is common for users to make personal adaptations for their own use.[1] Certain
letters also have specific meanings as well as their traditional alphabetic val
ue, as shown in the table below.