Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Phonetic and Stenographic Short Hand: A Scientific System of Sound and Sight Writing
This not only renders an alphabet a necessity, but that it must be of such construction that it forms the common cen ter embodying the elements and principles from which the signs emanate, and in such a manner that they will recipro cally suggest each other. If it is adlpted to general use, it must also be of such a character that it will impose no greater tax upon the mind to comprehend, or the memory to retain, than that of our common long hand writing, and if possible very much less. From this it follows that such an alphabet must be composed of the least number of characters or let ters, and of the simplest structure, and which involve the greatest number of elementary sounds they may be convem tionally made to represent, and in the same proportion Will the writing be legible and rapid of execution.
The fact is so patent to all, that it is scarcely necessary that we should say, that all written alphabets are mere am vmtz'onalisms, or that certain parties agree that certain marks shall represent certain things, or certain sounds, and whose unities or combinations shall convey certain ideas, and that the characters themselves have no phonetic peculiarity. The course most phonographers have pursued in the forma tion of their alphabets has been quite the reverse of this, even laboring to produce alphabets so numerically extended, amounting to from 75 to too in each, and difficult of forma tion, because intended to represent all the elementary sounds the language contains, analyzed to their extremest nicety.
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