My aunt Mary Jane has a collection of hand-written recipes, sloppily and confusingly encoded in some sort of cryptic alien shorthand.  Apparently, schools used to teach students how to write in shorthand, thus saving time and energy and making everything secretive and weird (though Isaac Newton wrote his scientific findings in shorthand, so that lends a little credibility to it).  Thankfully, Wikipedia has a detailed description, history, and list of the various types, or languages, of shorthand.  Looking at some of the examples (like Melin and Pitman) is like trying to decipher hieroglyphics. #language