I have had a kindly feeling, a friendly feeling, a cousinly feeling toward Simplified Spelling, from the beginning of the movement three years ago, but nothing more inflamed than that. It seemed to me to merely propose to substitute one inadequacy for another; a sort of patching and plugging poor old dental relics with cement and gold and porcelain paste; what was really wanted was a new set of teeth. That is to say, a new _alphabet_. The heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet. It doesn’t know how to spell, and can’t be taught. In this it is like all other alphabets except one—the phonographic. That is the only competent alphabet in the world. It can spell and correctly pronounce any word in our language. That admirable alphabet, that brilliant alphabet, that inspired alphabet, can be learned in an hour or two. In a week the student can learn to write it with some little facility, and to read it with considerable ease. I know, for I saw it tried in a public school in Nevada forty-five years ago, and was so impressed by the incident that it has remained in my memory ever since. I wish we could adopt it in place of our present written (and printed) character. I mean _simply _the alphabet; simply the consonants and the vowels—I don’t mean any _reductions _or abbreviations of them, such as the shorthand writer uses in order to get compression and speed. No, I would _spell every word out._ I will insert the alphabet here as I find it in Burnz’s Phonic Shorthand. (Figure 1) It is arranged__ on the basis of Isaac Pitman’s _Phonography_. Isaac Pitman was the originator and father of scientific phonography. It is used throughout the globe. It was a memorable invention. He made it public seventy-three years ago. The firm of Isaac Pitman & Sons, New York, still exists, and they continue the master’s work. What should we gain? First of all, we could spell _definitely_—and correctly—any word you please, just by the _sound _of it. We can’t do that with our present alphabet. For instance, take a simple, every-day word _phthisis_. If we tried to spell it by the sound of it, we should make it TYSIS, and be laughed at by every educated person. Secondly, we should gain in _reduction of labor_ in writing. Simplified Spelling makes valuable reductions in the case of several hundred words, but the new spelling must be _learned_. You can’t spell them by the sound; you must get them out of the book. But even if we knew the simplified form for every word in the language, the phonographic alphabet would still beat the Simplified Speller “hands down” in the important matter of economy of labor. I will illustrate: PRESENT FORM: through, laugh, highland. SIMPLIFIED FORM: thru, laff, hyland. PHONOGRAPHIC FORM: (Figure 2) To write the word “through,” the pen has to make twenty-one strokes. To write the word “thru,” the pen has to make twelve strokes—a good saving.