L’écriture abrégée dans la prise de notes d’étudiant·e·s postsecondaires au début du 21e siècle : comparaison d’échantillons de notes manuscrites et dactylographiées

Abstract

Introduction: In an academic context, abbreviations allow students to compensate for the difference between talking speed and writing speed (handwritten or typed) while taking notes. The difference between talking speed and writing speed (handwritten or typed) suggests that handwritten notetaking may require more abbreviation strategies to compensate for its slower speed. Objectives: This study aims to compare the use of abbreviated writing in typed and handwritten notes, and to analyze the frequency of different types of abbreviations in these two notetaking modes. The main hypothesis is based on the idea that handwritten notes have a higher rate of abbreviations than typed notes because of the greater time constraint. Method: The corpus is composed of twenty-two samples of post-secondary lecture notes in French, of which eleven are handwritten and eleven are typed. Four types of abbreviations were analyzed: logograms, siglas/acronyms, aphereses/apocopes, and syncopations. Welch’s t-tests were used with and without outliers to determine the significance in differences in abbreviation frequency according to the notetaking mode. Results: Statistical tests indicate a significant difference between both notetaking modes for total abbreviation frequency (p=0.043, d=0.97 with outliers, d=1.15 without outliers). Excluding outliers reduces the mean deviation of abbreviations but reinforces the significance of the difference. T‑tests show that aphereses/apocopes are used significantly more frequently in handwritten notes (p=0.019, d=1.25), while the respective frequencies of syncopations and logograms approach significance (p=0.056 and p=0.061). Conclusions: Handwritten notes show a higher proportion of abbreviations than typed notes, probably due to a more marked time constraint. The results also confirm strong inter-individual variability.