Introduction

This website contains resources for learning Quikscript, an alternative alphabet designed for the English language:

See the Learning page for more thorough explanations of the general concepts, and many finer details not discussed here. Elsewhere on this site, you can find Quikscript fonts, methods for typing it on computers, Quikscript e-books for reading practice and more.

You can start using Quikscript right now with the information below—try it!

On this page:

• What is Quikscript?
• The Quikscript alphabet
• Background
• What Quikscript is not

What is Quikscript?

Quikscript is a constructed script, designed especially for English. It uses 40 new letters—one letter for each phoneme (spoken sound). Compared to the old 26 letters of the alphabet we borrowed from the ancient Romans, this allows for more logical spellings and makes texts significantly shorter. As a bonus, each Quikscript letter is written with a single penstroke, reducing the labour of handwriting even further. The advanced “Senior” Quikscript introduces several alternate letter shapes and abbreviations that make writing even faster:

The alphabet is partly featural by design: most voiceless consonants are tall (ascending, like b d h k), most voiced consonants are deep (descending, like g j p q) and all vowels are short (like a c e m). A key feature is that there is no need to leave a gap between adjacent letters; if the next letter starts where the previous one ended, you don’t need to lift the pen from the page. However: Quikscript is not a cursive script, strictly speaking, since not all letter combinations are able to be joined—and joining any letters at all is not compulsory.

See the chart below for all the letters and the sounds they represent. If you are interested in learning the alphabet, I highly recommend reading the Quikscript Manual, which is a comprehensive self-teaching guide. If you have questions, feel free to ask on one of the available forums (see Other websites).

The Quikscript alphabet

The sound of each letter is given in the International Phonetic Alphabet, using traditional “Gimsonian” notation.

Notes

1. Write  for /eə(ɹ)/ as in pair, dare, there, prayer, etc.
2. Also used for /ʌ/ as in  “hut”, and /ɜː/ as in  “hurt”.

Standard abbreviations

Some of the shortest and commonest words are pronounced differently depending on context—like the;  or —or tend to have an indistinct or “weak” pronunciation in normal speech, like and, of, to, etc. In Quikscript, such words may be written with a single letter, keeping the spellings consistent while saving time and space:

Capitals, Punctuation and Numerals

There are no capital letters in Quikscript. To mark proper names, used a raised dot, for example: · “James”, · “Rome”. This can also be used to refer to letters: e.g. · “Out”.

Write a dot after each letter in abbreviations like ... “ATM” and ·... “USA” as in conventional all-capitals text.

As with conventional handwriting, use underlining for emphasis.

Brackets, or parentheses, should be angled or [square]; but not (round) as those resemble the Quikscript letters · and ·. All other punctuation marks are exactly the same as in conventional English writing. Numerals are also unchanged, although some writers prefer to underline numbers.

Special letters

These four letters are not part of the alphabet proper, but were mentioned in the Quikscript Manual to enable certain sounds to be spelt or to better “compete” with the Latin alphabet for economy:

•  and  may be required for Scottish and Welsh place names, etc.  may also be used for interjections like ugh.
•  and  are optional. When used, they replace  and , but only where the letter x occurs conventionally.

Background

(See the History page for more information)

Quikscript evolved from the Shaw Alphabet, in the 1960s. “Shavian” had been developed at the request of the famous writer, George Bernard Shaw, who used his Will to call for a worldwide competition to design a better English alphabet and leave money to the cause. He was motivated by the unwieldiness of English orthography—particularly the immense wastage of time and space caused by having to write single sounds with multiple Latin letters. It was reasoned that, since our conventional spellings are so ingrained—practically sacred—the public would never accept a major spelling reform, so an entirely new alphabet was needed. This provided an opportunity to make other improvements at the same time, such as simpler letter shapes to make reading and writing easier.

Although it was designed over the course of several years, with input from numerous experts, Shavian had undergone little real-world testing by the time of its public reveal in 1962. Such testing would occur later, with members of the public in international letter-writing circles. After four years’ experience with this correspondence, designer Kingsley Read decided “that some graphic and phonetic changes in the alphabet would increase its already striking facilities”, and that “it seemed a duty to implement it in a final alphabet”. Quikscript was the result. It was designed to make spelling and handwriting easier than in Shavian, mostly by increasing the number of opportunities for conjunctions between adjacent letters. Shavian’s most difficult-to-write letter shapes were changed, and three letters were merged into one so that American English speakers could spell more easily.

What Quikscript is not

A replacement cipher

If it was not already obvious from the different numbers of letters in each alphabet, there is no one-to-one correspondence between any Quikscript and Latin letters. Despite this, beginners often attempt to use the new letters to write the old, irregular spellings; for example:

• Writing “silent” letters in words like knight, write and doubt
• Writing double letters in words like hill, mitten and starry
• Using the same vowel letter for words with different pronunciation, such as cam, came and calm

The idea is to spell words by their sound, eliminating the confusion and waste of our current spellings. Doing this takes practice, to be sure. Indeed, some people are uncomfortable with the idea of kit, cap and queen all beginning with the same letter, for instance—but remember: that is the whole point!

A shorthand

Although faster handwriting is one of its goals, Quikscript differs from true shorthand systems in a few ways:

• Its letters differ by shape—not merely length, angle, or weight of stroke
• Writing is always done on a fixed horizontal writing line, just like conventional script
• For the above reasons, it may be typeset—unlike most shorthands
• It is not designed solely to optimise writing speed at the expense of readability; it is theoretically just as legible as conventional script (if not more, since scribbly connecting strokes between letters are not allowed!)

With that out of the way, go and have some fun!