Duployan shorthand
Script type	light-line geometric stenographic alphabet
Creator	Émile Duployé
Published	1868 (Pernin: 1877; Sloan: 1883; Ellis: 1888; LeJeune: 1891)
Status	historic and hobbyist usage
Direction	left-to-right
Languages	French, English, German, Spanish, Romanian, Chinook Jargon, Lillooet, Thompson, Okanagan
Related scripts
Child systems	Malone's Script Phonography
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Dupl (755), ​Duployan shorthand, Duployan stenography
Unicode
Unicode alias	Duployan
Unicode range	U+1BC00–U+1BC9F Duployan U+1BCA0–U+1BCAF Shorthand Format Controls[1]
Adaptations: Pernin (+ reporters'), Perrault, Sloan-Duployan (+ reporters'), Romanian stenography, Duployan metagraphie, and Chinook writing

The Duployan shorthand, or Duployan stenography (French: Sténographie Duployé), was created by Father Émile Duployé in 1860 for writing French. Since then, it has been expanded and adapted for writing English, German, Spanish, Romanian, Latin, Danish, and Chinook Jargon.^[2] 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^[2][3][4]

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 in 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.^[2]

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.

The line consonants come in five orientations: vertical, horizontal, left-to-right falling, left-to-right rising, and right-to-left falling; and in three lengths: short, long, and extended. Variations of some line consonants will have dots adjacent to the center of the line.

Arc consonants come in two arc lengths: half circle, and quarter circle. The half circle arcs have four orientations: left, right, top, and bottom half; and two lengths: regular and extended. Variations of the half circle arc consonants have dots inside and outside of the bowl, and dashes across the middle. The quarter arc consonants also have four orientations corresponding to the four quadrants of a circle, with both upwards and downwards strokes, and come in regular and extended lengths. The only variant quarter arc consonant is the addition of a dot (Duployan letter H) to the Duployan letter W to make the Duployan letter Wh.^[2]

Émile Duployé

Vowels

Vowels characters also come in two basic styles: circle vowels, and orienting vowels. Vowels have only a general shape and size, but their orientation and exact appearance are usually dictated by the adjacent characters.

Circle vowels are written by creating a loop that starts from the preceding character acting as a tangent, continuing around the circle until reaching the tangent point of the following character, at which point the following letterform is written, with the two adjacent characters crossing to complete the "circle". Variants of the circle vowels have dots in the middle of the circle, or a protuberance in from the circle. Circle vowels may also take standard diacritic marks when used to write some languages.

Some circle vowels

Orienting vowels are written by rotating the vowel to match the incoming angle of the preceding character, then mirrored along the axis of that character to avoid the following character crossing. They come in two varieties, defined by whether they will tend toward the right or left if the adjacent characters will allow either. Nasal vowels are considered a special case of an orienting vowel, and will act as orienting vowels, except in the Chinook script, where nasals can appear as diacritics.^[2]

Affixes and word signs

Many Duployan shorthands use small unattached marks, as well as various crossing and touching strokes, as markers for common prefixes and suffixes. Individual letters and letterlike symbols are also used in many Duployan shorthands to stand for common words and phrases. Overlapping two or more letters and signs can be used in some shorthands as word signs and abbreviations.^[2]

Ligatures

Most Duployan scripts do not make use of true ligatures that are not just one of its constituent letters with a distinguishing mark. The Romanian stenography is fairly unusual in having a number of vowel ligatures, especially with the Romanian U.^[2]

Connecting letters

Most Duployan letters cursively connect to any adjacent letters. Circle vowels will sometimes reduce to as small as a semi-circle in order to accommodate the incoming and outgoing strokes of adjacent letters, and orienting vowels will rotate to meet the preceding letter at a straight angle, while mirroring to present themselves to the following letter.

+

+

=

P

+

A

+

T

=

pat

+

+

=

* E would normally sit on the left side of P, except that it must sit on the right to join with the T.

P

+

E

+

T

=

pet

+

+

+

=

J

+

A

+

I

+

N

=

shine

+

+

+

+

+

=

P

+

E

+

Lh

+

T

+

E

+

N

=

pelten (Chinook)

Alphabetical order

Duployan does not have a widely agreed alphabetical order. A precursory order for the alphabet was invented for the Unicode script proposal, however, and this order can basically be found in the order of the Unicode allocation (see Table of characters). This order places consonants before vowels, with similar type and size letters grouped roughly together.

Table of characters

This table lists the characters used in all of the Duployan shorthands along with their Unicode code points.^[5][6] A basic alphabetization can be derived from the order of the letters. Letters with a name otherwise identical to a more universal letter will have a parenthetical denoting its shorthand of use: (Per) for Pernin's Universal Phonography, (Rom) for Romanian stenography, and (Sl) for Sloan-Duployan shorthand.

Spacing and line consonants

spacing consonants						short line consonants
Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter
Name			Name			Name			Name			Name			Name			Name
1BC00			1BC01			1BC02			1BC03			1BC04			1BC05			1BC06
H			X			P			T			F			K			L
long line consonants															extended line consonants
1BC07			1BC08			1BC09			1BC0A			1BC0B			1BC0C			1BC0D			1BC0E			1BC0F			1BC10
B			D			V			G			R			PN			DS			FN			KM			RS
variant line consonants
1BC11			1BC12			1BC13			1BC14			1BC15			1BC16			1BC17			1BC18
Th			Dh (Sl)			Dh			Kk			J (Sl)			hL			Lh			Rh

Arc consonants

half arc consonants												half arc consonants (cross variants)
Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter
Name			Name			Name			Name			Name			Name			Name			Name
1BC19			1BC1A			1BC1B			1BC1C			1BC1D			1BC1E			1BC1F			1BC20
M			N			J			S			MN			NM			JM			SJ
half arc consonants (dotted variants)																		large variant half arc consonants
1BC21			1BC22			1BC23			1BC24			1BC25			1BC26			1BC2F			1BC30			1BC31
M + dot			N + dot			J + dot			J + dots			S + dot			S + dot below			JS + dot			JN			JNS
large half arc consonants												large half arc consonants (cross variants)
1BC27			1BC28			1BC29			1BC2A			1BC2B			1BC2C			1BC2D			1BC2E
MS			NS			JS			SS			MNS			NMS			JMS			SJS
downslope quarter arc consonants															large downslope quarter arc consonants
1BC32			1BC33			1BC34			1BC35			1BC36			1BC37			1BC38			1BC39			1BC3A
ST			STR			SP			SPR			TS			TRS			W			Wh			WR
upslope quarter arc consonants									large upslope quarter arc consonants
1BC3B			1BC3C			1BC3D			1BC3E			1BC3F			1BC40
SN			SM			KRS			GRS			SK			SKR

Vowels

circle vowels															I / E
Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter		Code	Letter
Name			Name			Name			Name			Name			Name			Name
1BC41			1BC42			1BC43			1BC44			1BC45			1BC46			1BC47
A			Ow (Sl)			OA			O			Aou			I			E
non-orienting I/E variants												I/E variants
1BC48			1BC49			1BC4A			1BC4B			1BC4C			1BC4D			1BC4E			1BC4F			1BC50
Ie			short I			Ui			Ee			Eh (Sl)			I (Rom)			Ee (Sl)			Long I			Ye
quarter circle vowels												Other 'U' vowels
1BC51			1BC52			1BC53			1BC54			1BC55			1BC56			1BC57			1BC58			1BC59
U			Eu			Xw / Uh			UN			Long U			U (Rom)			Uh			U (Sl)			Ooh
dotted circle vowels						compound W-vowels
1BC5A			1BC5B			1BC5C			1BC5D			1BC5E			1BC5F			1BC60
Ow			Ou			Wa			Wo			Wi			Wei			Wow
basic nasal vowels												variant nasal vowels
1BC61			1BC62			1BC63			1BC64			1BC65			1BC66			1BC67			1BC68			1BC69			1BC6A
Un			On			In			An			An (Per)			Am (Per)			En (Sl)			An (Sl)			On (Sl)			uM

Affixes, marks, punctuation, and others

invariant attached affixes
Code	Affix		Code	Affix		Code	Affix		Code	Affix		Code	Affix		Code	Affix
1BC70			1BC71			1BC72			1BC73			1BC74			1BC75
orienting attached affixes
1BC76			1BC77			1BC78			1BC79			1BC7A			1BC7B			1BC7C
high affixes
1BC80			1BC81			1BC82			1BC83			1BC84			1BC85			1BC86			1BC87			1BC88
low affixes
1BC90			1BC91			1BC92			1BC93			1BC94			1BC95			1BC96			1BC97			1BC98			1BC99

Other marks and symbols
Code	Symbol		Code	Symbol		Code	Symbol
Name			Name			Name
1BC9C			1BC9E			1BC9F
Chinook Likalisti (eucharist) sign			Double Mark			Chinook punctuation mark

French Duployan

The use of French Duployan shorthand has historically been heavier in areas of southern France and Switzerland, with the Prévost-Delaunay and Aimé-Paris shorthands more common in northern France and the Paris area.

French Duployan makes use of an extensive list of letter words, combined consonants, and affix marks, but does not cross letters to make abbreviations. Like most European shorthands, French Duployan omits vowels that can be guessed by a fluent speaker.^[7][8]

Chinook writing

Introduction to the Wawa shorthand

The Chinook writing, or Wawa shorthand, or Chinuk pipa, was developed by Father Jean-Marie-Raphaël Le Jeune in the early 1890s for writing in Chinook Jargon, Lillooet, Thompson, Okanagan, Latin, and English, with the intended purpose of bringing literacy and church teaching to the first nations in the Catholic Diocese of Kamloops. The result was three decades' publication of the Chinook Jargon language Kamloops Wawa.^[9]

The Chinook writing is notable by the absence of affixes and word signs, the phonological rigor – vowels were not omitted, even when predictable – and its use of W-vowels. Chinook writing is also notable in splitting a word into nominally syllabic units as well as using the only non-joining consonant characters in Duployan.^[10][11]

Romanian stenography

The Romanian stenography was developed by Margaretta Sfințescu in the 1980s. Like French Duployan, Romanian stenography uses a large number of affix marks and word signs.^[12]

English shorthands

Several adaptations of Duployan were developed for writing English, including those by Helen Pernin, J. Matthew Sloan, Denis Perrault, Carl Brandt, and George Galloway. The Pernin, Perrault, and Sloan shorthands are distinguished from other Duployan shorthands by the presence of the quarter-arc compound consonants. They also make use of affix marks, and omit redundant vowels.^{[clarification needed][13][14][15]} Galloway and Brandt shorthands are not included in the Duployan Unicode proposal.^[2]

Unlike other Duployan shorthands, Sloan-Duployan uses a thick, or heavy, stroke to indicate the addition of an "R" sound to a letter. Although not found in the other Duployan shorthands, contrastive thick and thin strokes are common in other shorthands, such as Pitman shorthand, where a heavy stroke would indicate a voiced consonant, and thin the unvoiced version of the same consonant.^[13]

Unicode

Duployan shorthand was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0.