Word Groupings: Several outlines that are written together (It will be; That there is; I would be able to; Thank you for coming to, etc.). You can find a growing collection of Word Groupings posts on the LLTT Blog.
Special Outlines: Commonly used words which are "reduced" so there is less to write. The best way to learn them is to write them over and over.
Distinguishing Outlines: When two or more frequently occurring words have the same outline, it is necessary to give each word a "distinguishing outline" to avoid transcription errors. Examples would include: has/his; perhaps/purpose and amused/amazed.
Abbreviations : In general, if a word can be shortened in longhand, you can use the shortened version in Teeline. And whenever possible, make one letter do the work of two.
Cassell's Dictionary of Abbreviations show that each letter of the alphabet, standing alone, is used to represent many words of which that letter is the initial. For example, the letter "a" is commonly used, in different contexts, to represent more than 40 different words!
Teewords: In Teeline, when two or more words are represented by a single outline, that is called a word grouping. The simplest kind of grouping consists of two words joined together (it was, that is, there were, and so on). The forming of Teewords takes this word grouping concept a step further. A Teeword, then, is simply a memory aid (or mnemonic) for a streamlined word grouping. Take a familiar expression like "Both Sides of Industry" - that's technically four outlines. But if you can create a simplified, memorable word, like "bosindy," then it's relatively easy to create an outline that represents this reduced form that is far simpler to both write and remember.
Meet the Teeline Family - Part One
About two-fifths of the characters we write are unnecessary. This means most of the vowels and unsounded consonants can be eliminated with no loss of comprehension.
Meet the Teeline Family - Part Two
Common Words and Their Importance (What, When, Where, Why, With, Which, Each, Much, For)
Simple Word Groupings (In the, If the, At the, From the, For the, Will be the, It will be the, We shall have the)
Advanced Word Groupings (As Soon As Possible, As Much As Possible, As Quickly As Possible, By the End of the Day (Week, Month, Year), At the End of the Day (Week, Month, Year)
Advanced Word Groupings - Chopping the Wood / Would
Distinguishing Outlines (Has, His, This, These, Those)
A Special Note on S and Zed (Amused, Amazed)
Y in a Word (Three things to remember: When "Y" is Silent; When "Y" says "Y", When "Y" Says "I")
Upward L (Gull, Gulp, Pull, Polite, Pulled)
Upward L after H (After "H", "M", "N") - Hell, Help, Mail, Mull, Null, Knelt, Mailed, Held, Halt, Halted, Attitude)
Special Outline - Evidence (below the line)
Begin, Began, Begun (also under the line)
More Common Words (On, Only, That, They)
Words That End in "LY" - Let's Kick the 'ell out of them
Common Words - They had (E indicator vs. Y indicator discussion)
Word Combinations (All Over the World)
Simple Word Combinations that come together (It is, It has, It was, It was a, As Soon As Possible, I will, I will be, I will be able to)
Two Special Outlines (Different, Difficult)
PL Blends (Paul and Lisa)
When PL comes in the middle of a word
An important use of the PL Blend - "People" (Some people, many people, these people)
Elaboration on the word "Purple"
Word Endings Vowel N - G (ING, ANG, ONG, UNG)
A longer word - "Belonging" (and sing, singers, hungry)
Lovingly (ING with LY)
A "bonus" word grouping - All Things Being Equal
Extending the lesson - Sink, Sank, Sunk, Donkey
Pointing out two outlines that are worth mentioning (if you care about speed)
Additional Notes on PL Blends: As you learned, when P and L come together (with no vowel between them) at the beginning of a word, you can write L in the P position through the line.
While there are many examples of words that begin with PL, learn the outlines for these to start: Place, Play, Plan, Please, Plant, Player, Plus, Plane, Pleasure, Plenty, Plate, Plastic, Plot, Plain, Platform, Planet and Pleasant.
Why? Because these "PL - beginning" words are in the Top 2,800 words from the New General Services List project (NGSL). Statistically, the words on the NGSL list cover over 90% of the general English texts you are likely to encounter. Are they the only ones you will need? No, but you should know these before moving on to other (less frequently encountered words) as you are more likely to see these before you do other words.
