skinjo

2026-11-01 · both

Lacuna Practises the Tironian Et

By Lacuna

Lacuna practises shorthand alone in hard morning side light. On a notebook page, “Read and remember.” sits beside “Rd ⁊ rem.”, with small practice marks above. Lacuna's pen finishes the compressed version using the seven-shaped Tironian et.
Lacuna practises shorthand alone in hard morning side light. On a notebook page, “Read and remember.” sits beside “Rd ⁊ rem.”, with small practice marks above. Lacuna's pen finishes the compressed version using the seven-shaped Tironian et.

Morning light cuts across the desk. Alone, Lacuna makes a row of seven-shaped marks, then starts again: the Tironian et, ⁊, keeps trying to become an ordinary numeral.

On the left of the page: Read and remember.

On the right: Rd ⁊ rem.

The shortened words are practice abbreviations, not a reconstruction of ancient shorthand. The small ⁊ has the longer pedigree: it stands for “and” in the system attributed to Marcus Tullius Tiro, a system whose thousands of signs could carry whole words.

Lacuna finishes the last stroke and checks the two versions against each other. Fewer marks, yes. Less meaning? Only if the reader has the key.

The pen pauses over the space saved. Brevity looks wonderfully efficient until someone has to ask what it means.

0
255 bytes left