Teenage secretary Stephanie Pettitt looks all set to enter the record books – she writes shorthand faster than most people talk.

Stephanie, 19, who lives in Stanbury Avenue, Watford, recently picked up a certificate for writing at 190 words per minute – and that, says Mr Peter Pitman, great grandson of the inventor of the best-known shorthand system, must be a record for Pitman 2000.

Indeed, Mr Pitman is so impressed that he says he will support Stephanie if she decides to apply to the Guinness Book of Records – once he has checked that her exam script is genuine and written in pure Pitman 2000.

Stephanie started learning shorthand five years ago, at Langleybury School.

Although she works as a secretary, she says shorthand writing is really a hobby.

She says her real ambition is to become a partner’s secretary in the London firm of solicitors where she works.

[From the Watford Observer of May 20, 1983]