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.
To write that same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to
make only _three _strokes.
To write the word “laugh,” the pen has to make _fourteen _strokes.
To write “laff,” the pen has to make the _same number_ of strokes—no
labor is saved to the penman.
To write the same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to
make only _three _strokes.
To write the word “highland,” the pen has to make twenty-two strokes.
To write “hyland,” the pen has to make eighteen strokes.
To write that word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make
only FIVE strokes. (Figure 3)
To write the words “phonographic alphabet,” the pen has to make
fifty-three strokes.
To write “fonografic alfabet,” the pen has to make fifty strokes. To
the penman, the saving in labor is insignificant.
To write that word (with vowels) with the phonographic alphabet, the
pen has to make only _seventeen _strokes.
Without the vowels, only _thirteen _strokes. (Figure 4) The vowels are
hardly necessary, this time.
We make five pen-strokes in writing an m. Thus: (Figure 5) a stroke
down; a stroke up; a second stroke down; a second stroke up; a final
stroke down. Total, five. The phonographic alphabet accomplishes the m
with a single stroke—a curve, like a parenthesis that has come home
drunk and has fallen face down right at the front door where everybody
that goes along will see him and say, Alas!
When our written m is not the end of a word, but is otherwise located,
it has to be connected with the next letter, and that requires another
pen-stroke, making six in all, before you get rid of that m. But never
mind about the connecting strokes—let them go. Without counting them,
the twenty-six letters of our alphabet consumed about eighty
pen-strokes for their construction—about three pen-strokes per letter.
It is _three times the number_ required by the phonographic alphabet.
It requires but _one _stroke for each letter.
My writing-gait is—well, I don’t know what it is, but I will time
myself and see. Result: it is twenty-four words per minute. I don’t
mean composing; I mean _copying_. There isn’t any definite
composing-gait.
Very well, my copying-gait is 1,440 words per hour—say 1,500. If I
could use the phonographic character with facility I could do the 1,500
in twenty minutes. I could do nine hours’ copying in three hours; I
could do three years’ copying in one year. Also, if I had a typewriting
machine with the phonographic alphabet on it—oh, the miracles I could
do!
I am not pretending to write that character well. I have never had a
lesson, and I am copying the letters from the book. But I can
accomplish my desire, at any rate, which is, to make the reader get a
good and clear idea of the advantage it would be to us if we could
discard our present alphabet and put this better one in its place—using
it in books, newspapers, with the typewriter, and with the pen.
(Figure 6)—_Man Dog Horse_. I think it is graceful and would look
comely in print. And consider—once more, I beg—what a labor-saver it
is! Ten pen-strokes with the one system to convey those three words
above, and thirty-three by the other! (Figure 7) I mean, in SOME ways,
not in all. I suppose I might go so far as to say in most ways, and be
within the facts, but never mind; let it go at _some_. One of the ways
in which it exercises this birthright is—as I think—continuing to use
our laughable alphabet these seventy-three years while there was a
rational one at hand, to be had for the taking.
It has taken five hundred years to simplify some of Chaucer’s rotten
spelling—if I may be allowed to use so frank a term as that—and it will
take five hundred more to get our exasperating new Simplified
Corruptions accepted and running smoothly. And we sha’n’t be any better
off then than we are now; for in that day we shall still have the
privilege the Simplifiers are exercising now: _anybody _can change the
spelling that wants to.
_But you can’t change the phonographic spelling; there isn’t any way._
It will always follow the SOUND. If you want to change the spelling,
you have to change the sound first.
Mind, I myself am a Simplified Speller; I belong to that unhappy guild
that is patiently and hopefully trying to reform our drunken old
alphabet by reducing his whiskey. Well, it will improve him. When they
get through and have reformed him all they can by their system he will
be only HALF drunk. Above that condition their system can never lift
him. There is no competent, and lasting, and real reform for him but to
take away his whiskey entirely, and fill up his jug with Pitman’s
wholesome and undiseased alphabet.
One great drawback to Simplified Spelling is, that in print a
simplified word looks so like the very nation! and when you bunch a
whole squadron of the Simplified together the spectacle is very nearly
unendurable.
The da ma ov koars kum when the publik ma be expektd to get rekonsyled
to the bezair asspekt of the Simplified Kombynashuns, but—if I may be
allowed the expression—is it worth the wasted time? (Figure 8)
To see our letters put together in ways to which we are not accustomed
offends the eye, and also takes the _expression _out of the words.
La on, Makduf, and damd be he hoo furst krys hold, enuf!
It doesn’t thrill you as it used to do. The simplifications have sucked
the thrill all out of it.
But a written character with which we are _not acquainted_ does not
offend us—Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, and the others—they have an
interesting look, and we see beauty in them, too. And this is true of
hieroglyphics, as well. There is something pleasant and engaging about
the mathematical signs when we do not understand them. The mystery
hidden in these things has a fascination for us: we can’t come across a
printed page of shorthand without being impressed by it and wishing we
could read it.
Very well, what I am offering for acceptance and adoption is not
shorthand, but longhand, written with the _Shorthand Alphabet
Unreduced_. You can write three times as many words in a minute with it
as you can write with our alphabet. And so, in a way, it _is _properly
a shorthand. It has a pleasant look, too; a beguiling look, an inviting
look. I will write something in it, in my rude and untaught way:
(Figure 9)
Even when _I_ do it it comes out prettier than it does in Simplified
Spelling. Yes, and in the Simplified it costs one hundred and
twenty-three pen-strokes to write it, whereas in the phonographic it
costs only twenty-nine.
(Figure 9) is probably (Figure 10).
Let us hope so, anyway.