In order to determine if there is a significant difference in the capitalization skills, punctuation skills, and word usage and sentence structure recognition skills of students who have had one year of shorthand instruction, two sample groups (shorthand and non-shorthand) were obtained from three English populations (no English or nongrammar English, grammar English, and nongrammar English and a foreign language) of 11th grade United States history classes from five large Utah high schools. The Language, California Achievement Test was used as a pretest during the first month of school, and an alternate form of the same test was given as a posttest during the eighth month. A multiple-classification analysis of covariance statistic was used to analyze the criterion variables. The three independent variables were knowledge of shorthand, school attended, and English population. No test involving the shorthand variable, either as a main effect or as an interaction with the school variable or English variable, was significant at the .05 level of confidence for capitalization, punctuation, and word usage and sentence structure criterion variables. (Author/LL)