Why Samuel Pepys Wrote in Shorthand

Samuel Pepys wrote most of his famous diary in Shelton's shorthand. Magdalene College identifies speed as his primary reason: the system let him put a great deal on paper quickly. Secrecy may have been an advantage, but shorthand was not a private code invented by Pepys and it should not be confused with modern encryption.

Shelton's shorthand was a writing tool, not a unique cipher

Thomas Shelton developed the tachygraphy system Pepys used. It was known in seventeenth-century Cambridge and used by other writers. Pepys may have learned it while at Magdalene College. Names, places, and occasional difficult words sometimes appear in longhand among the shorthand marks.

The distinction corrects a popular story. An unfamiliar script can look like deliberate encryption to a later reader, but the system had a published key and contemporary users. Its obscurity grew after it fell out of use.

Speed helped him preserve a crowded day

Pepys recorded public events such as plague and the Great Fire of London alongside work, meals, health, entertainment, household life, and relationships. Shorthand reduced the friction of capturing that density. It helped the writing keep pace with the material.

That is different from writing quickly merely to complete a daily habit. The form served the richness of observation. When a day contains many small scenes, a compact notation can protect details that a polished narrative would discard.

Try the scene method in How to Write About Ordinary Days: time, place, people, one sensory detail, and what felt different from yesterday. Use abbreviations only if future you will still understand them.

Obscurity offered limited privacy

Magdalene College notes that secrecy may have benefited Pepys and that his wife likely did not know the shorthand. Yet the diary was eventually transcribed. John Smith spent years doing that work in the nineteenth century, after the system had become unfamiliar.

Shorthand can slow a casual reader. It cannot create a reliable boundary once the system is known. The same applies to invented abbreviations, mirror writing, or hiding a document under an ordinary filename.

For sensitive digital writing, compare those tactics with a private-journal protection checklist. A password, device lock, access setting, and client-side encryption address different risks.

Transcription changed who could read the diary

Pepys's manuscript remained difficult to access until it was transcribed and edited. Early editions omitted intimate material that later editors restored. The public diary is therefore not only the result of Pepys's daily writing. It also reflects later work by transcribers, editors, and institutions.

When digitizing a family diary, keep three layers distinct:

1. an image of the original page;
2. a faithful transcription, including uncertainty;
3. an edited reading version, with changes documented.

This lets readability improve without silently replacing the record. The same separation is central to digitizing old journals without losing context, especially when handwriting, abbreviations, or damaged pages leave room for uncertainty.

Choose a fast form you can still recover

A modern compact journal might use a stable set of marks for place, people, decisions, questions, and moments to revisit. Put the legend somewhere durable. If the notation protects genuinely sensitive content, assume it can eventually be read and add real access protection.

Use journal tags as quiet signposts when retrieval matters more than writing speed. The best notation is not the cleverest one. It is the smallest form that preserves enough context and remains understandable when the day is no longer fresh.

Sources and notes

• Magdalene College: Samuel Pepys's Diary
• Magdalene College: Great Fire of London diary page

Sources reviewed August 8, 2026. The article follows Magdalene College in treating speed as the main documented reason and secrecy as a possible advantage.