Word: shorthand
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...years. Jack Romagna, a civil servant who works in Washington, suffered from a recurrent nightmare. In his dream Romagna sat at the elbow of the President of the U.S., transcribing in shorthand a presidential address. But for some reason. Romagna's pen moved without leaving a mark. And as the President talked on, his unrecorded words were lost forever...
...dream no longer disturbs Jack Romagna's repose. After 20 years as the White House shorthand reporter, dealing with everything from Franklin D. Roosevelt's stutter (in search of the right word) to John F. Kennedy's burp-gun Boston twang. Romagna is reasonably confident that his right hand can keep pace with any presidential tongue. The pace is quickening. Roosevelt's top speaking velocity of 200 words per minute scarcely winded Romagna, who can handle up to 240 w.p.m., or four words per second. But Kennedy has been timed in bursts of 327 w.p.m. Such...
British-born Jack Romagna, 51, earned his place in the White House by an early determination to become the best shorthand reporter in the business. As a boy of 13 in Washington, where his father was butler to the late U.S. Senator Davis Elkins of West Virginia. Romagna learned Gregg shorthand (and typing) in night school, spent 40 daytime practice hours a week taking down everything he heard on the radio. In 1941. when the White House shorthand reporter resigned, Romagna, then working for International Business Machines Corp. in New York...
Seasickness v. Bach. To gird for the New Frontier. Romagna endlessly replayed tapes of the Kennedy-Nixon TV debates, worked up an assortment of new shorthand symbols to fit New Frontier talk. One graceful jiggle of the Romagna pen, for example, expands into 13 words...
...nothing to do with Romagna's political preference. To him, all men, including Presidents, are measured by the quality of their syntax, platform delivery and oral timbre. Using these criteria, Romagna says Stevenson would be a cinch to transcribe. "Adlai's English was made for the shorthand system," says Jack Romagna. "It's marvelous. He has a grand command of the language. And ah, the phrasing...