Gregg Shorthand, learning

  I was preparing a version of this already, but I didn't like it. I only have time to do things piecemeal, so anyone reading this, I apologize for my posts from now on, they'll all be shorter and more piecemeal. It'll be like putting together a puzzle's pieces.
  I've been learning Gregg Shorthand for awhile, in a piecemeal way. I write fast but I don't know all of the theory, so I need to get faster.
  The basic way to learn the alphabet and the theory is to pretend Gregg is another alphabet, that comes with ligatures and abbreviations. Getting fast at translating eventually transfers to recognizing the shapes themselves but this is, I think, an important in-between step. It would be easier if people learned the abbreviations first actually.
  Cue this idea. There's a Gregg phrasal/entry dictionary that lists Gregg words in ASCII format. It's great but it's a little hard to read because it spaces all the graphs, digraphs, and trigraphs with dashes. If it just did it like the normal written language the abbreviations would be easier to learn; for example, the phrase "he can go" is just <ekg> (I know, ha.)
  ru ar oot ad haPND? 
  Are you <ru> aware <ar> of what <oot> had <ad> happened <haPND>? 
  Are you aware of what had happened?
  DTe g eththm OR n?
  Did he <DTe> go <g> with them <eththm> or <OR> not <n>?
  Did he go with them or not?
  This would be super-easy to use for a lot of texts if I could just get an automatic translation key working.