Clickable dictation at various speeds is available at the bottom of this page. The transcript of the dictation appears here as well.
More of that "normal" dictation material from the Pitman people. I hate posting business letters especially since they are available almost everywhere. As you probably know if you visit this site, I've tried to use material that is more interesting than those awful sales letters used in current shorthand texts. If you're going to have to take a piece numerous times, you may as well have something more interesting than dunning letters.
Teach Yourself Pitman Shorthand, 1967, p. 154-155
Exercise 132
Most of the large department stores advertise regularly in the daily newspapers. Whenever they hold a special sale, and particularly at Christmas and Easter, when people do more shopping than usual, the stores increase the size of their advertisements. It would be interesting to know whether the additional sales are sufficient to cover the expense of advertising. Evidently it is sufficiently profitable, for the stores continue their campaigns without interruption. Probably the stores have a method of estimating fairly accurately whether they are getting full value from their advertising campaigns.
In addition to regular newspaper advertising, many of the stores advertise by direct mail, that is, they send announcements to individual customers calling their attention to special offerings.
Exercise 133
The majority of us agree in the matter of recognizing and admitting that the cheerfulness of others has often been instrumental in helping and comforting us in trying circumstances. Some people seem to think that cheerfulness is the result of thoughtlessness but, fortunately, these individuals are in the minority.
To our way of thinking, cheerfulness is generally the result of thoughtfulness and kindly feelings of friendship. Bearing in mind our thankfulness for cheerful and friendly words in a time of trouble, we should persistently strive to avoid complaining or whining about hardships.
The popularity of a cheerful personality and the unpopularity of those individuals who carry with them an air of hopelessness and cheerlessness, is instructive. But apart from helping others, we benefit ourselves from a psychological and physiological point of view, as it is a fact that health can be improved through a mental attitude of optimism and cheerfulness.
For more information on shorthand speed building, click here.
Instructions for Self-Dictation Practice:
Copy and paste the above article into a word-processing document, using double or triple spacing and 12- or 14-pitch type.
As always, be sure to check your shorthand dictionary for correct outlines before "drilling"!
Dictation Practice:
Note that the material was counted and recorded for dictation at 100; all other speeds were copied from the 100 take and electronically adjusted and may therefore sound unusual.
60 wpm 80 wpm 100 wpm 120 wpm 140 wpm
The dictation material above is copyrighted, all rights reserved.