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Cut Spelling is a system of English-language spelling reform which reduces redundant letters and makes substitutions to improve correspondence with the spoken word. It was designed by Christopher Upward and was for a time being popularized by the
Simplified Spelling Society The English Spelling Society is an international organisation, based in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1908 as the Simplified Spelling Society. It primarily aims to raise awareness of problems caused by English spelling's irregularity and t ...
. The resulting words are 8–15% shorter than standard spellings. The name ''Cut Spelling'' was coined by psychologist
Valerie Yule Valerie Constance Yule (2 January 1929 – 28 January 2021) was an Australian researcher in literacy and imagination, and a clinical child psychologist, academic, school psychologist and teacher, working in disadvantaged schools, Melbourne and ...
. Unlike some other proposed reforms, Cut Spelling does not attempt to make English spelling phonemic, but merely attempts to remove many of the unneeded difficulties of the current spelling. Cut Spelling differs from "traditional orthography" mainly in removing letters from words and makes relatively few substitutions of letters compared with other proposed reforms. According to its designers, this allows readers accustomed to traditional orthography to get used to Cut Spelling fairly quickly and easily, while still giving learners of the language a much-simplified and more systematic spelling system.


Rules

Cut Spelling uses three main reduction rules to convert traditional spellings into "cut spellings": # Letters irrelevant to pronunciation. This rule deletes most silent letters, except when these letters (such as " magic e") help indicate pronunciation. Omitting or including the wrong silent letters are common errors. Examples: ''peace'' → ''pece'', ''except'' → ''exept'', ''plaque'' → ''plaq'', ''blood'' → ''blod'', ''pitch'' → ''pich''. # Cutting unstressed vowels. English unstressed syllables are usually pronounced with the vowel
schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English ...
, which has no standard spelling, but can be represented by any vowel letter. Writing the wrong letter in these syllables is a common error ─ for example, writing ' for ''separate''. Cut Spelling eliminates these vowel letters completely before approximants ( and ) and nasals (, , and ). In addition, some vowel letters are dropped in suffixes, reducing the confusion between ''-able'' and ''-ible''. Examples: ''symbol'' → ''symbl'', ''victim'' → ''victm'', ''lemon'' → ''lemn'', ''glamour/glamor'' → ''glamr'', ''permanent'' → ''permnnt'', ''waited'' → ''waitd'', ''churches'' → ''churchs'', ''warmest'' → ''warmst'', ''edible'' → ''edbl''. # Simplifying doubled consonants. This rule helps with another of the most common spelling errors: failing to double letters (''accommodate'' and ''committee'' are often misspelled) or introducing erroneously doubled letters. Cut Spelling does not eliminate all doubled letters: in some words (especially two-syllable words) the doubled consonant letter is needed to differentiate from another differently pronounced word (e.g., ''holly'' and ''holy''). Examples: ''innate'' → ''inate'', ''necessary'' → ', ''spell'' → ''spel''.


Substitution rules

The Cut Spelling system also uses three substitution rules: # The digraphs ''gh'' and ''ph'' become ''f'' when pronounced . Examples: ''draught'' → ''draft'', ''sulphur'' → ''sulfr'', ''photograph'' → ''fotograf''. # The letter ''g'' is changed to ''j'' when pronounced or . Examples: ''judge'' → ''juj'', ''rouge'' → ''ruje''. # The combinations ''ig'' and ''igh'' are changed to ''y'' when pronounced . Examples: ''flight'' → ''flyt'', ''sign'' → ''syn''. ''The Cut Spelling Handbook'' also lists optional additional rules such as replacing ''ch'' with ''k'' when it makes the sound, respelling as ''y'' unusual patterns that make the
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
, as well as replacing ''-tion'', ''-cian'', ''-sion'', ''-ssion'', etc. with ''-shn''.


Examples

; Note: The example above assumes British pronunciation by abbreviating "military" to "militry".


See also

* List of reforms of the English language * Spelling Reform 1 (SR1) *
Handbook of Simplified Spelling The Simplified Spelling Board was an American organization created in 1906 to reform the spelling of the English language, making it simpler and easier to learn, and eliminating many of what were considered to be its inconsistencies. The board ope ...
*
Traditional Spelling Revised Traditional Spelling Revised (TSR) is an English-language spelling reform alternative to the semi-regular conventional English orthography (EO). TSR is a relatively conservative scheme. It seeks to identify the underlying rules of EO but to apply t ...


References


Sources

* * {{refend


External links


'' The English Spelling Society - Books and papers''
Includes the Cut Spelling Handbook
CutSpel
Web browser extension to convert automatically convert standard English to Cut Spelling english. For Google Chrome. English spelling reform