Nomenclature

About the name Quikscript

The definitive document of this alphabet is Quikscript: its Alphabet and Manual or the Quikscript Manual for short. Internally, this text actually refers to the alphabet as Quickscript (with a c in “quick”) consistently. The front cover omits this extra c, however, and this is the spelling most commonly used on the internet.

It has also been called the Second Shaw Alphabet by Cole Turnley in Cole’s Funny Picture Book No. 2, and the Read Alphabet on the Read Alphabet Yahoo! Group.

Summary of letter names

This is not a comprehensive list of names that have been applied to Quikscript letters over the years—in fact, a different set of names is used almost every time the alphabet is mentioned in print or on the web. These names are merely those that have authority behind them or were used in significant publications. They are listed in Quikscript alphabetical order; note that Shavian and Readspel have different ordering.

The columns of the table below derive from the following sources:

№, Read: numbers and so-called “keywords” given by Kingsley Read in the Quikscript Manual.
Turnley: new names given by Cole Turnley in Cole’s Funny Picture Book № 2. Most of these names, he states, were derived from Alphabets and Reading by Sir James Pitman.
Zuck: revised names given by Jon Zuck, as agreed upon by the online community around the turn of the millennium. They were based on the Shavian equivalents, as described in his document, Revised Shaw Alphabet of Kingsley Read.
Shavian: names for Shaw Alphabet letters, as published in Androcles and the Lion, for comparison.
Readspel: names from Kingsley Read’s final work, Readspel, which is essentially an extension of the Latin alphabet in a similar vein to Pitman’s Initial Teaching Alphabet. This was published as a table of letters in The Kingsley Read Alphabet Collection: a catalogue from the University of Reading.

Quikscript				Shavian	Readspel
№	Read	Turnley	Zuck	Shavian	Readspel
1	Pea	Pee	Pipe	Peep	Pip
2	Bay	Bee	Bob	Bib	Be
3	Tea	Tee	Tut	Tot	To
4	Day	Did	Deed	Dead	Do
5	Key	Kay	Kick	Kick	Can
6	Gay	Gay	Gig	Gag	Go
7	Thaw	Ith	Thoth	Thigh	Think
8	They	Thee	Thither	They	The
9	Fee	Ef	Fife	Fee	For
10	Vie	Vee	Valve	Vow	Vixen
11	See	Ess	Sis	So	So
12	Zoo	Ez	Zoos	Zoo	Zoo
13	She	Ish	Shush	Sure	Show
14	J’ai	Jai	Zhivago	Measure	Vision
15	Cheer	Chay	Church	Church	Cheer
16	Jay	Jay	Judge	Judge	Just
17	Ye	Yay	Yo-yo	Yea	Young
18	Way	Way	Win-win	Woe	Woe
19	He	Hay	Ha-ha	Ha-ha	Have
20	Why	—	Whitewheat	—	What
21	-ing	Ing	Inkling	Hung	Hung
22	May	Em	Mime	Mime	Me
23	No	En	Nun	Nun	Nun
24	Low	El	Loll	Loll	Let
25	Roe	Ray	Roar	Roar	Roll
26	It	It	If	If	Inky
27	Eat	Een	Eat	Eat	Eat
28	Et	Et	Ed	Egg	Ever
29	Eight	Ain	Age	Age	Able
30	At	At	Ash	Ash	As
31	I	Ide	Ice	Ice	Ibex
32	Ah	Ahd	Ah	Ah	Alms
33	Awe	Aud	Awl	Awe	All
34	Ox	Og	On	On	On
35	Oy	Oin	Oil	Oil	Oil
36	Utter	Nul	Ado	Ado	Ago
37	Out	Oun	Out	Out	Owl
38	Owe	Ode	Oak	Oak	Open
39	Foot	Oot	Wool	Wool	Pull
40	Ooze	Ood	Ooze	Ooze	Ooze
41¹	Loch¹	—	Loch	Loch, Bwlch²	—
42¹	Llan¹	—	Llan	Llan²	—
43¹	Excite¹	—	Axe	—	—
44¹	Examine¹	—	Exam	—	—

Notes

The letters     were not numbered in the Manual. These are the numbers commonly accepted in the community, given according to the order in which they appeared.
Shavian equivalents of  and  were listed as part of Read’s final submission to the Public Trustee, as shown in Part 2 of Leo Philp’s Shavian series. These letters were apparently never mentioned in any publication, leaving them obscure today (and unsupported by Unicode).