Mark Twain on Spelling Reform
by Mark Twain

This comic article is written in a semi-phonetic style of spelling that Mark Twain invented for the purposes of the article. Spelling simplification was a recurring interest of his.

He wrote this article in 1899 - probably the last of his published essays.

Samual Clemmens drew heavily on a similar essay that G. Bernard Shaw had written. However, Shaw used a simplified notation called "Pitman shorthand" which he considered unsatisfactory but useful at times.

Neither Shaw or Clemmens could tolerate abbreaviations.

They believed the alphabet should be linear and consistent - whereas shorthands are not. Twain seems to say that he never mastered a shorthand but he could see its utility.