Duployan shorthand
shorthand writing system devised by Émile Duployé in 1860 for French, later adapted for English, German, Spanish, Romanian, and Chinook Jargon
The Duployan shorthand, or Duployan stenography (French: Sténographie Duployé), is a shorthand writing system created by Father Émile Duployé in 1860 originally for writing French. Since then, it has been expanded and adapted for writing English, German, Spanish, Romanian, Latin, Danish, and Chinook Jargon. The Duployan stenography is classified as a geometric, alphabetic stenography and is written left-to-right in connected stenographic style. The Duployan shorthands, including Chinook writing, Pernin's Universal Phonography, Perrault's English Shorthand, the Sloan-Duployan Modern Shorthand, and Romanian stenography, were included as a single script in version 7.0 of the Unicode Standard / ISO 10646
Typology and structure
Duployan is classified as a geometric stenography, in that the prototype for letterforms are based on lines and circles, instead of ellipses. It is alphabetic, with both consonant and vowel signs in equal prominence. Writing is in a left-to-right direction, proceeding down the page, as is common European writing. Most Duployan letters will attach to adjacent letters, allowing a word (or words) to be written in a single stroke, without lifting the pen.
Consonants
Consonant characters come in two basic styles: line consonants and arc consonants. All consonants have a shape, size, and stroke direction that do not change based on the surrounding characters. Both types of consonants are contrasted by orientation, length, and the presence of ancillary dots and dashes on or near the letter.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Duployan shorthand” as shorthand writing system devised by Émile Duployé in 1860 for French, later adapted for English, German, Spanish, Romanian, and Chinook Jargon. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as shorthand writing system devised by Émile Duployé in 1860 for French, later adapted for English, German, Spanish, Romanian, and Chinook Jargon. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5316025. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1860.
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This entry incorporates text from “Duployan shorthand” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.