Blocking Notations

       Ever wonder, how exactly actors remember where there suppose to be on stage, well it's pretty easy. It's called Blocking notations. With myself, being in high school productions, when we have certain movements like cross over to "bob" or sit down on chair, well we write it in our margins, but it doesn't make much sense to write the whole thing out, you waste room and waste time. Also the stage manager often copies down the blocking, just in case an actor forgets where he or she is supposed to be it actually is very handy, when you need something short and quick to write down, and you can completely understand it. It's not someone's personal blocking notation, but essentially a universal notation many people use, we use this especially in theatre at my school, and it does sure come in handy, if you forget blocking or if your blocking is changed. 
       So here are the basics. To change a level in an actors movement you make arrows going up and down. To distinguish between characters and objects, is super simply, but lets give an example say you have to move down to Charlie, but there is always a chair on stage, so how would you remember what/who to move down to? It's easy, you distinguish a person by circling the letter. Well what if you have to objects, how do you distinguish them both, well it's easy you add a second later, like Table and Telephone, you would put table as Ta (make the second word lower case) and telephone as Ta. Also lets say you are going to cross over to someone or something you use a X which symbolizes cross over too. If you have a specific place your suppose to be on stage, since the stage is cut in different parts, like downstage, up left center, or stage left, you would just use the initials, such as DS, ULC, and SL. A swirl means to turn around, and the number 2 is just short for to.
Look at the picture there is some example I wrote down so you have a visual on what it's suppose to look like.