372 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



idiomatic vowels, where needed, and letting the others look 

 after themselves. The degraded vowels of course disappear 

 if we use the emendatory scheme as well. 



Accents may also be neglected on capitals ; and the mark 

 of dieresis may be used on i, instead of the acute accent, which 

 does not look well on that letter. 



It may be thought that much confusion will still be caused 

 by the employment of the same mark for so many values ; but 

 the confusion is not so great as might be expected, because the 

 different groups of values tend to occur in different classes of 

 words. Thus the marks on idiomatic values are required 

 principally in polysyllables, and those on the other groups, 

 chiefly in monosyllables. 



Of course we can be much more exact if we are allowed more 

 than one diacritic. A good plan is to use the dieresis, where 

 required, for the long idiomatic values (somewhat as in German), 

 and the acute accent for the other values only ; and this gives 

 much greater accuracy without much change. The grave accent 

 may also be used for irregular unstressed values and for silent 

 letters. But the difficulty is that the employment of many 

 diverse marks makes the printing unsightly — as will be observed 

 on comparing a page of French with one of Spanish, with its 

 almost exclusive and elegant use of the acute accent. 



But I cannot discuss all the details here. My main point is 

 to suggest that English spelling could be greatly improved by 

 the introduction of one or even more diacritics, without making 

 the alterations which offend so many people. At all events, the 

 marks would serve to call attention to existing defects, and 

 therefore to encourage efforts to remedy them. 



