The lessons of this book were originally known as "Haven's 300-Words-a-Minute Shorthand Lessons", and the author has been severely criticised for using that title, his critics claiming that the public might imagine that the title meant that the lessons would give that speed to any student in three months. To this the author begs to say he does not agree to give a speed of 300-words-a-minute in three months, nor in any set time. Very few professionals have it or require it, many speakers not using over 120 or 150 words a minute. For office work 70 to 120 words a minute is the minimum and maximum. It is this speed that can be given ordinary students in three months, and the volumes of praise which business men have given respecting the superiority of work of Haven quick-time graduates over the long-time ones of other schools, prove the value of this plan of teaching.

These lessons are known as "300-Words-a- Minute Shorthand Lessons " because they contain abbreviating material, sufficient, with proper practice, to give that great speed to those few persons who have a natural aptitude for the art, whose brains and hands act very quickly by nature, and who are well educated. Once in a while a shorthand reporter meets with a speaker who talks at the rate of 180 to 200 words a minute, sometimes 250 a minute, and there have been a few public speakers like Philip Brooks, whom reporters writing the Pitman and other systems could not report verbatim, because the speaker uttered 300 or more words a minute at times, the system of shorthand written by the reporter not being capable of that speed-for most systems fail at anything over 150 words a minute. But Haven's Practical Phonography contains the speed elements of fully 300 words a minute, as the author and numbers of his brightest pupils have repeatedly written at that rate and over, at many public tests; but, it cannot be done by other systems, and, as before stated, is seldom necessary. The point that all would-be students should remember, is that any speed desired is much easier obtained from lessons containing the possibility of 300 words a minute as a maximum, than from those old lessons used by most teachers, which, at their best, have only the elements of 150 words a minute.