SSSS versus CRESS
New Technology for the Reading and Writing Problem
A Fundamental Contrast
- SSSS: Senseless Spelling Sabotaging Society: the existing system of traditional English spelling makes no sense
- We see painful and costly cultural nonsense: traditional spelling is as hard to learn as anything that does not make sense
- CRESS: Consistent Regular English Spelling System: a scientific and engineering innovation carefully designed to fix the problem
- CRESS is carefully designed to be the only fully worked out and effective solution to the English reading problem
- It provides massive benefits for foreign speakers learning to pronounce and write English
- Traditional spelling violates the concept of phonetic spelling upon which much of civilization is based
- There is cultural destruction in teaching a phonetic idea based on massive phonetic confusion
- Teaching of sound letter correspondence is self-defeating by any system that confuses sound letter correspondences.
- CRESS has been carefully engineered for essential requirements over 20 years
- Previous reading systems are remedial and superficial embedding confusion while maintaining it
- CRESS goes back to fundamental underlying basic science principles
- A sound is a sound and a letter is a letter and always the twain shall meet
- Cress is extremely simple… see the online How-To and Alphabet pages for a simple introduction
- The points made below will light up on their own
- disruptenglish.com
- Do not teach two things at once that confuse each other: English spelling and phonetic expectations confuse each other
- Do not teach the phonetic principle by confusing the phonetic principle
- Traditional spelling (almost comically?) confuses and impedes the phonemic awareness it is built on
- English spelling problems are like anti-slip coating for floors, mixed with grease.
- A cultural sadly cosmic anti-science joke with pervasive, destructive implications.
- Parents might well consider confusion, lost time, discouragement, perplexity, loss of self-esteem in early grades.
- The fix is simple: common sense backed by AI used in spelling translation software: English to CRESS and CRESS to English.
- A carefully engineered writing system thought out over 20 years from all angles
- Uses the standard alphabet
- No special character set for electronic devices
- Looks reasonably like standard English
- Easily readable with very little learning
- Paragraphs and books are noticeably shorter
- Easily typed at a regular QWERTY keyboard.
- The few special arrow symbols (< > ^) are designed for articulatory awareness
- The few special symbols make sense in terms of tongue position (< > ^)
- Can co-exist with standard spelling and provides a big help teaching standard spelling
- Computer transliteration is already available in AI software
- Minimized friction between standard spelling and CRESS due to computer automatic transliteration
- Allows a handy/efficient shorthand by omitting the few special symbols (< > ^), as in e.g. European and Semitic language diacritics.
- Provides easily readable, compressed and efficient spelling by omitting the few special symbols (< > ^).
- Bootstraps reading for beginners with built-in phonemics
- Also anticipates streamlined versions for advanced users, replacing special arrow symbols with double letters, following h, etc.
- Consistent, regular, without exceptions
- Write as you speak, one symbol per sound
- Tongue position awareness is built in.
- Learning of phonemic awareness is integrated to learning to read.
- No confusing overlapping digraphs
- Phonemic awareness built into the writing system
- A writing system to directly build and reflect phonemic awareness, without diabolically confusing phonemic awareness
- It’s all intended simply to make sense
- Phonemic spelling has been tried before. But never carefully engineered!
- In any case it’s an obvious scientific necessity.
- It’s too big a change
- The new system is small and simple and easy to learn.
- Traditional spelling can continue: CRESS is the best first teaching step
- The fun, ironic paradox is that adding CRESS subtracts!
- It simplifies traditional spelling
- There are fewer letters used: no c, j, q, x- only 22 letters in the alphabet
- The overall total system is *smaller*
- Learning of the overall system is faster and easier
- Why ask children to learn two systems?
- They already do, two confused systems that confuse each other.
- CRESS supports and facilitates standard spelling. CRESS can carry standard spelling on its back.
- CRESS is not an extra system, but the basics which underlie standard spelling
- Finally, learners can have a single integrated rational system that will make sense
- It’s different from all the reading research and programs developed over decades
- Correct, it’s an innovation.
- The underlying science has been known for a long time.
- Change can be faster or slower, but the favorable incline to a solution based on science and engineering
- Educational credentials, bona fides, and academic citations
- The system is not founded on educational research or tenuous connections to brain/cognition research
- The system is based on Linguistic Science and the need for rational incremental learning
- The inventor has recognized credentials in both academic Linguistics and Linguistic Engineering
- Former well-published tenured associate professor of Linguistics
- Long career in linguistic engineering at premier companies and a leading think tank
- Multiple industrial awards and three patents
- Inventor of technology patent purchased by Google
- Inventor of helpfulness feature in Amazon reviews.
- Successful entrepreneur creating technology used by millions of users
- Expert on Inuit Language Including Phonemic Orthography
- The system has been engineered for practical goals rather than publication in academe
- The system is based on obvious common-sense principles that require no citation
- There is no need to document learning difficulty of two intertwined systems each confusing the other
- It’s better to learn basics rather than delve immediately into complications that contradict the basics
- If phonemic awareness is important, systems must use the phonemic principle
- No more tables of overlapping, contradictory and confusing digraphs
- No patterns or mnemonics to learn.
- No more impedance from lack of phonemic awareness
- Less pain is all gain.