Back in the day, I took a two-year bilingual secretarial course in English and French. It was a joy studying business, office practice, typing and Pitman shorthand, all in English and French.
Pitman shorthand is an art form; a beautiful, artistic system that enables writers to achieve high speeds (I passed examinations at 140wpm in English and 120wpm in French).
Nathan Behrin (USA) holds the Guinness record for Pitman shorthand speed — 350 words per minute over a two-minute test at 99.72% accuracy, and 300 wpm over five minutes at 99.64%, both in tests in New York in December 1922.
Back to my college days; I spent two years, 4-5 days a week in term time, learning and perfecting shorthand. There were squiggles and lines to learn that represented different consonants, prefixes and suffixes. We had to learn positioning to indicate vowels and it was emphasised that the smaller the outlines, the faster the speeds. I did a lot of practice on the bus too!
BakerWriteTM Speedwriting, which is based on the principles of Pitman shorthand, will never get you to 350wpm, but actually, that is rarely necessary. People have passed examinations in BakerWriteTM Speedwriting at 70 wpm, which is still faster than most people can handwrite (average around 30-40wpm). Unless you are doing verbatim notes, this is quite fast enough for taking notes in meetings, for example.
The advantage of BakerWriteTM Speedwriting is that there are no squiggles and lines to learn; it uses only letters of the English alphabet, but the writers simply do different things with them (https://www.bakerthompsonassoc.co.uk/what-is-bakerwrite-speedwriting/). The principles can be learnt in a few hours and, with regular practice, people can become proficient in weeks. It is much more tailored to people’s needs nowadays, in our fast-paced working environment.