Running head: AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 1 

An Analysis of English Spelling Reform 

Weijia Fang 

The University of Michigan   

AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 2 

Abstract 

In the research, I categorized different spelling reform proposals in history as either gradual or radical, 

based on the extent of variations from the traditional spelling. Examples from both categories are 

briefly summarized after the categorization. In order to compare the effect of these spelling reform 

proposals, C programs are used to convert phonetic transcription into different radical reform 

spellings, while the phonetic transcription and Lindgren (1969)’s reformed spelling are manually 

transformed. After that, a TeX program is used to calculate space efficiency, and a separate C program 

is used to calculate the approximate speed of visual recognition. When considering the change in 

pronunciation and dialectal differences, Franklin (1779)’s new alphabet gets a surprisingly good result 

in all three measures—83.1% total length of traditional spelling, and 224.9% reading speed. I believe 

that its design can provide some inspiration to improve my own proposal.   
AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 3 

1 Introduction 

English spelling is too messy and need to be reformed. However, not all reform proposals are 

equally effective. I set up three criteria for comparing my proposal against several important ones in 

history, and used computer programs to calculate the respective data for each. I think that by such 

comparison, I might get some ideas about improvements to my proposal. 

1.1 The necessity of spelling reform 

English spelling is so irregular that there is very little clue of pronunciation from spelling, and 

vice versa. This discrepancy between English orthography and pronunciation is mostly resulted from 

the phonetic shifts as well as dialectal differences. From the fifteen centuries onward, events that are 

called “Great Vowel Shift” collectively significantly modified vowel pronunciation (Stemmler, 1965). 

In comparison, proto-Mandarin spoken around the same time, as reflected by P

​ honetics and Rhyming 

in Central Plains​ (Zhou, 1324) would only be perceived as having a not-so-strong accent by modern 

northern Chinese, as I observed from linguists’ reconstructions (Hu, 2003). 

In addition, such changes are inconsistent. Words like “but,” “cut” and “dull” used to be 

pronounced with a short “oo” sound as in modern “foot” (Stemmler, 1965), as is in the case of some 

northern dialects in England. These words changed their vowels into a lower “uh” in modern times. 

However, “put” and “bull” did not change, creating a split between previous rhyming groups. 

To eliminate these discrepancies, only a complete spelling reform is viable. 

1.2 Historical approaches of spelling reform 

Although there has never been a successful spelling reform in action, many people have 

realized its necessity and put out different proposals. Some of these proposals are quite radical: they 

include an entirely new alphabet, with each letter corresponds to only one sound. These include 
AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 4 

Benjamin Franklin (1779)’s new alphabet, Henry Sweet (1877)’s Romic alphabet, and so on. Other 

proposals like Noah Webster (1806)’s or Harry Lindgen (1969)’s proposals only includes minor 

reforms from their contemporary orthography, in order to make it more regular; these can be classified 

as gradual reforms. W. M. U. (1879)’s proposal stands in the middle of the spectrum: it made a nearly 

one-to-one correspondence between symbols and sounds, yet largely retained the original shape in 

many cases. 

1.3 Judgement factors 

There are three major factors in judging the performance of each reformed spelling. 

The first important factor is orthographic regularity. When pronunciation and spelling 

matches better, the spelling system would be easier to learn. For example, elementary students in 

Germany only needs to learn 30 letters, 3 diphthongs and several special rules to be able to pronounce 

most words correctly; those in France would also learn about silent consonant letters and alternative 

pronunciation for several suffixes; those in the UK or the US, however, would suffer the most because 

of the inherent irregularities of English spelling. 

It would be equally important for letters to be distinguished as much as possible within a 

glance. Cyrillic alphabet for Russian, for example, fails at this criteria: the letters “и” (​i)​ , “н” (​n)​ , “ц” 

(​c)​ , “ш” (​š​)and “щ” (​ś)​ all consists of equally spaced vertical bars, which can only be distinguished 

through the central part, which is more difficult to spot than through the top or bottom. 

Last but not least, the space efficiency is also somehow crucial, because people can generally 

read faster if the same piece of information is more compact in space. 

2 Several important proposals, including mine 

In this chapter, I will briefly describe one gradualistic reform and several radical reforms.   
AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 5 

2.1 Lindgen’s gradual reform 

Lindgen (1969) proposed a series of gradual reforms to English orthography, aimed at making 

it more phonetic while largely maintaining the traditional spellings. The proposal is divided into stages, 

with the first five steps as follows: 

● Write words with a short “e” with an “e” only, such as changing “bread” to “bred.” 

● Change all “ph” to “f,” such as “foto” for “photo.” 

● Change “augh” according to the actual pronunciation, so changing “naught” to 

“naut” but “laugh” to “laf.” 

● Change “ough” as well, such as “though” to “tho,” “enough” to “enuf,” “plough” to 

“plou,” “cough” to “cof,” “bought” to “baut,” and “through” to “thru.” 

● Drop the final “e” when it does not change the pronunciation, such as those in “have” 

or “are,” but not in “name” or “practice.” 

Among these five moves, the only thing I am not sure is the change of “ough.” The alternative 

spelling of “plow” is already used in the US, so I think it is possible to change it into “plow” as well, 

but then it will falsely imply a connection with “low” or “glow.” As for dropping the final “e,” I think 

it is possible to make both “practice” and “practise” to be “practis,” for example, and it will create no 

greater confusion than other existing words that can be used as either a noun or a verb. 

2.2 Historical Radical reforms 

Since radical reforms are mapped one-to-one with sounds, they are summarized in Table 1. 

Among these proposals, Sweet (1877) use the original Latin alphabet and did not introduce new 

letters, W. M. U. (1879) introduced some other letters for vowels and consonants, and Franklin 

(1779) introduced many more letters for different phonemes. 

AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 6 

There are several things worth noticing. The first is that these reformers does not hold the 

same opinion regarding capital letters. Sweet (1877) proposed abolishing capital letters altogether, 

while W. M. U. (1879)’s attitude was unclear from the original passage. Franklin (1779) was not 

consistent in using capital letters: the first word in the first poem, “​Huen​” (When), was written with a 

capital H, as in traditional orthography; at the same time, the first word in the first letter, “​ɥi​ ​” (I), was 

written with a lowercase initial (pp. 471–472). It is possible that Franklin simply retained the original 

capital letters, but did not bother inventing capital case for new letters. 

In addition, the pronunciation reflected by each spelling system was strongly influenced by 

individual proposers’ accents. The two nineteenth-century proposals roughly fits what is considered 

conservative pronunciation in their respective countries: W. M. U. (1879)’s proposal distinguished 

“cot” and “caught,” while indicated that “s” in “vision” had a slightly different tongue position from 

that in “sure”; Sweet (1877)’s proposal indicated that “off” had a long vowel, “for” and “four” were 

pronounced differently, while the main vowels were still diphthongs in words like “square” or “poor.” 

However, I cannot find any descriptions that reflect the same accent as Franklin (1779) transcribed: in 

his examples, “a” in “what” was considered closer to that in “man” than “o” in “not,” “man” and “can” 

did not rhyme, while “are” and “air” were homophones. 

Despite these inconsistencies, these historical spelling reforms still had some influence on my 

choice of letters and distinction of phonemes. 

2.3 My radical reform 

My spelling reform proposal consists of 31 letters, including 24 from the original alphabet, 4 

additional consonant letters, and 3 additional vowel letters. Most of the additional letters are brought 

from other Germanic languages—relatives of English, such as “þ”, “ð” and “æ” from Icelandic, and 
AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 7 

some are brought from the International Phonetic Alphabet. Contrary to the historical proposals 

mentioned above, I believe it is important to have uppercase and lowercase distinctions, as this makes 

it easier to spot sentence beginnings and proper nouns. It is for this purpose that I created the 

uppercase version of International Phonetic Alphabet letters, whom are usually used as lowercase only. 

In the spelling method, I tried to maintain both dialect neutrality and orthographic regularity, 

by allowing some regional variations perceive two or more letters to be homophones: as in the example 

of German (​eu​ vs ​äu​), two spellings for the same sound does not harm regularity as much as having 

different sounds for the same spelling.  

For example, although “far” and “kot” (cot) are pronounced with the same vowel in the US 

but not in the UK, both sides will agree that “far” rhymes with “bar” and “kar” (car), and that “kot” 

rhymes with “lot” and “pot”; as a result, both sides would perceive the use of letters as regular. Similar 

things happen to letter “ō” and letter “r”: everyone agrees that “kōt” (caught) rhymes with “brōt” 

(brought), “Kəriə” (Korea) with “aidiə” (idea), and “kərir” (career) with “mir” (mere), and it does not 

matter whether “kot”-“kōt” or “Kəriə”-“kərir” are pairs of homophones. 

However, there are also several drawbacks I can see. The first one is that a mostly phonetic 

spelling makes some derived words looks completely different, especially when it comes to shifts in 

accents, such as “foutəgræf” (photograph) and “fətogrəfi” (photography). In addition, dialect 

neutrality cannot be maintained in some cases, such as “bath” or “glass”: the American pronunciation 

uses “æ,” while the British pronunciation use “a.” The third one is that the omission of unstressed 

vowels would create consecutive consonant letters in words of multiple suffixes, such as in “ʃarpnr” 

(sharpener) or “naʃnl” (national). 

 
AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 8 

3 Judgement of systems 

After describing several spelling reform systems including mine, I will compare them against 

the traditional spelling in the three factors mentioned above: space consistency, orthographic 

regularity, and visual recognition. Because it is difficult to process Franklin (1779)’s alphabet in 

modern computer, I will use the four text samples—two poems and two letters—included by himself 

to compare. (pp. 471–478) The calculation of Franklin (1779)’s results are explicitly recorded below, 

while that of other methods are calculated using different computer programs. 

3.1 Space efficiency 

Space efficiency can be measured by the relative length of passages in different systems; the 

shorter they are, the more efficient it is in space. Except for Franklin (1779)’s, all of them are typed in 

Computer Modern font. 

The scanned document for the four examples have a capital height of 3 millimeters, while that 

of the 10-point Computer Modern font is 7 points. The following are total lengths of the passages at 

screen size: 

Poem 1 70 + 61 + 68 + 70 + 68 + 17 + 70 + 13 = 437 (mm) 

Poem 2 70 + 63 + 70 + 62 + 70 + 66 = 401 (mm) 

Letter 1 63 + 13 × 70 + 34 = 1007 (mm) 

Letter 2 8 × 66 + 90 × 70 + 16 + 11 + 49 + 30 – 3 × 4 = 6922 (mm) 1 

Therefore, the total length would be 8767 millimeters. Considering that 3 millimeters 

corresponds to 7 points, that gives out 20456 points. All the other proposal’s lengths are calculated 

using TeX programs, and listed in Table 2. 

1
The subtraction is for three footnote symbols each occupying 4 millimeters. 
AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 9 

It can be seen that generally radical reforms are more space-efficient. Among the four radical 

proposals, Franklin (1779)’s saves the most space. On the other hand, it is surprising to see that 

Lindgren (1969)’s gradual reform only removed 1 percent of total letters, whereas I expect there to be 

more frequent short “e”s or “gh”s in an English passage. 

3.2 Orthographic regularity 

Generally, radical reform proposals would be better in orthographic regularity. For example, 

even in Lindgen (1969)’s proposal there are still two pronunciations for “-tion” (nation vs. question), 

and not all silent letters are gotten rid of (such as those in “night” and “eight”). In the radical reform 

proposals, the first two are written separately, for example as “neiʃn” and “kwescn” in mine, and the 

silent “gh”’s are completely removed. However, there are some trade-offs when transcribing 

pronunciations. For example, the change of pronunciation would make a radical reform outdated: 

when I first saw Franklin (1779)’s and Sweet (1877)’s proposals, I could not stop wondering why they 

would get certain sounds wrong, while they are in fact probably accurate within their own accents. 

3.3 Visual recognition 

Generally speaking, when words can be distinguished better in a glance, the reading process 

would also be faster. Since letters are written from left to right, the distinction at the top and bottom is 

easier to spot: for example, “lot” is easier to be distinguished from “pot” than “pet” is. The algorithm I 

use calculates the number of “confusing” letters solely based on top and bottom part. For example, 

there are two letters having a vertical descender (p and q), three with a rounded shape (c, e and o), and 

one with a small ascender (t), so the “pot” is assumed to be read in ln(2 × 3 × 1) ≈ 1.79 time units. The 

total values for all passages are calculated using C, and listed in Table 2.  
AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 10 

I am surprised by the relatively fast speed W. M. U. (1879) achieves, because most of its 

modified letters are different in the middle, which slows down the reading process. However, when 

considering that it expresses several diphthongs using one letter, it is understandable as well. Franklin 

(1779)’s is the best among all six spellings, which can be attributed to his creativity in choosing new 

letters. (pp. 467–470) 

3.4 Other minor factors 

It is easy to see that space efficiency and better visual recognition roughly corresponds to the 

ease of using the system as an amateur; orthographic regularity corresponds to the ease of learning the 

system from scratch. However, there is one other factor that I ignored: the ease of transformation, 

which can be measured by the similarity between traditional spelling and the reformed spelling. In this 

aspect, the gradual reforms would have been better. 

4 Conclusion 

In this research, I analyzed several spelling reform proposals to English. It can be seen that 

radical reforms always do better for new learners and amateurs, and gradual reforms are better for 

transforming from current spelling. When the view is not confined to modified Latin alphabet, then 

Franklin (1779)’s version would be the most effective one to use, and it is not hard to modify it into 

fitting current American accents either. Among the remaining radical reforms, mine is the second best, 

thanks to the more complete knowledge of phonetics today than one hundred years ago. I believe that 

I can get inspiration from Franklin (1779)’s designs of letters, while still maintaining my dialect 

neutrality in vowels. 

   
AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 11 

Table 1-1: Vowels in different reform proposals 

Modern IPA  Example  Franklin  Sweet  W. M. U.  Mine  Notes 

(1779)  (1877)  (1879) 
British  American 

iː  i  b​e  i​(i​ ​)  ii  e  ii  e​: should be a crossed “e” 

ɪ  s​i​t  i  i   

ɪə(ɹ)  ɪɹ  h​ere  i​(i​ ​)r​   iiə(r)  e​r  ir  e​: should be a crossed “e” 

ɛ  b​ed
​  e​(​e)​   e, ae  e   

a  æ  b​ad
​  e​, ​a  æ  a  æ   

ɛː(ɹ)  ɛɹ  air  er  aeə(r)  er  er   

uː  u  f​oo​d  u​(u

​ ​)  uu  ō  uu   

ʊ  p​ut​  u  u  w  u   

ɔː(ɹ)  ʊɹ  p​oor  u​(u

​ ​)r​   uuə(r)  wr  ur   

ɔː  ɑ  c​augh​t  ( )  ao  o  ō   

ɔː(ɹ)  ɔɹ  s​ore  r  aoə(r)  or  ōr   

ɒ  ɑ  n​o​t  , ​a  o  ā  o   

ɒ(ɹ)  ɔɹ  s​orr​y  r  or   

ɑː  ɑ  f​at​her  a​(a​ ​), e​   aa  ā  a  e​: only used in “are” (​er​) 

əː(ɹ)  əɹ  b​ir​d  ɥ​r  oe  ur  (ə)r  (ə): unwritten when unstressed 

ə  a​bout  ɥ  ə  u  (ə)  (ə): unwritten before l, m or n 

ɐ  ə  b​u​t  ɥ  ə  u  ə   

eɪ  b​ay  ê​, ​ee  ei  a  ei  a​: should be a crossed “a” 

aɪ  h​i  ɥ​i  ai  ɨ  ai   

ɔɪ  b​oy  i  oi  oi  oi   

əʊ  oʊ  l​ow  o  ou  ɵ  ou   

aʊ  l​ou​d  u  au  aw  au   

juː, jʊ  ju, jʊ  you  iu​(​u)​   yu(u)  ʉ  yu   

 
AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 12 

Table 1-2: Consonants in different reform proposals 

Modern IPA  Example  Franklin  Sweet  W. M. U.  Mine  Notes 

(1779)  (1877)  (1879) 

θ  th​ing  th  th  þ   

 

ð  th​e    dh  ħ  ð   

ʃ  sh​ip    sh  ʃ   

ʒ  mea​su
​ re  z   zh  zi  ʒ   

tʃ  ch​air  t   c  ch  c   

dʒ  j​u​dge  d   j   

ŋ  si​ng  ŋ  ng   

w  w​ay  u  w   

j  y​es  i  y  i  y   

The following consonants are quite consistent in all proposals as well as traditional spellings, so they 

are unaffected: p, b, t, d, k, g, f, v, s, z, h, l, r, m and n. 

Table 2: Comparison of statistics 

Spelling  Total length of  Relative total length  Log(recognition  Relative reading 
passages (pt)  (%)  difficulty)  speed (%) 

Traditional  24607  100.0  3007.9  100.0 

Franklin  20456  83.1  1337.7  224.9 

Lindgren  24363  99.0  2956.0  101.8 

Sweet  23337  94.8  2438.9  123.3 

W. M. U.  21833  88.7  2184.1  137.8 

Mine  21261  86.4  1779.3  169.0 

   
AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 13 

References 

Franklin, B. (1779). A Reformed Spelling. In Benjamin Vaughan (ed.), ​Political, Miscellaneous, and 

Philosophical Pieces​ (pp. 467–478). London. 

Hu, A. (2003). ​General Knowledge of Chinese Phonetics​. Beijing: Zhonghua book company. 

Lindgen, H. (1969). S​ pelling Reform: A New Approach​. Alpha Books. 

Stemmler, T. (1965). D
​ ie Entwicklung der englischen Haupttonvokale: eine Übersicht in Tabellenform. 

Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht​. 

Sweet, H. (1877). A
​ Handbook of Phonetics, including a popular exposition of the principles of spelling 

reform​. Clarendon Press. 

Webster, N. (1806). Orthography. In Webster N., A

​ Compendious Dictionary of the English Language​. 

New Haven: Sidney’s Press. 

W. M. U. (1879). Alphabetical Changes and Rules for Reform Spelling. In C

​ hicago Daily Tribune​. 

Zhou, D. (1324). ​Phonetics and Rhyming in Central Plains​. 

   
AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SPELLING REFORM 14 

Outlines 

Based on analysis about space efficiency, orthography regularity and visual recognition, I analyzed the 
performances of several spelling reform proposals, and listed ways to improve my own. 
I. Introduction 
A. The necessity of spelling reform 
B. Historical approaches 
1. Gradualism: Webster’s “Orthography”, Spelling Reform Society, SR1 in 
Australia 
2. Radicalism: Ben Franklin’s new alphabet, Romic Alphabet 
C. Factors to judge the performance of reformed spelling 
II. Brief description of several important attempts and mine 
A. Lindgen’s proposal 
B. U. S. spelling reform society 
C. Ben Franklin’s new alphabet 
D. Romic Alphabet 
E. Mine 
III. Analysis of these proposals according to various factors 
A. Space efficiency (how much space is taken when writing the same passage; use the same 
font whenever possible) 
B. Orthographic regularity (how much does the same letter corresponds to the same 
sound) 
C. Visual recognition (how quickly can people recognize a specific word) 
D. Other minor factors 
1. Learning as a beginner 
2. Transferring from old orthography 
IV. Conclusion