are intended to be, and in similar characters with different imports, should not make the writing illegible.
The system should allow the highest necessary degree of speed without excessive labor, still maintaining legibility unimpaired, for legibility is practically useless if it is attained at the expense of brevity and vice versa.
As the vowels play an important part in the construction of Volapük because of their use as prefixes and suffixes, their full and correct expression is highly important. A slight change in a vowel sound would entirely alter the meaning of a word, a phrase, or a sentence. While it seems therefore, that the connective-vowel system, on which the stenographies above referred to are built may be best suited in spite of its cumbrousness, to the language, perhaps other means may be found that will better accomplish the desired end. It is certain that the system of shorthand could not be built on the Pitmanic plan, on account of its discarding the vowels, or only partially expressing them. A solution of the difficulty, however, may perhaps be found in some scheme of vowel indication similar to that used in Bishop's Exact Phonography. The great loss of speed consequent on the use of joined-vowel strokes, most effectually excludes that plan from consideration, and leaves the plan suggested as the one in which most likely the proper method may be found.
The signs most easily made should represent the most frequently recurring sounds. In this connection comes the question of adopting light and heavy signs; the maintenance of lineality of writing, and the adoption of the circle and square or the ellipse, or both, as the basis of the system. Other things being equal, a light-line system would be preferable to one composed of both light and heavy signs.
Not the least important consideration is the capability of easily forming derivatives. As Volapük is an inflected language, in which the derivatives are formed from a root-word by the prefixing or suffixing of certain syllables, it is plain that its system of shorthand must
