Editing Initial Teaching Alphabet (section)

{{short description|Aid for teaching English reading}}
{{More footnotes needed|date=August 2010}}
The '''Initial Teaching Alphabet''' ('''ITA''' or '''i.t.a.''') is a variant of the [[Latin alphabet]] developed by Sir [[James Pitman]] (the grandson of Sir [[Isaac Pitman]], inventor of a system of shorthand) in the early 1960s. It was not intended to be a strictly phonetic transcription of English sounds, or a [[English-language spelling reform|spelling reform for English]] as such, but instead a practical simplified writing system which could be used to teach English-speaking children to read more easily than can be done with traditional [[orthography]]. After children had learned to read using ITA, they would then eventually move on to learn standard English spelling. Although it achieved a certain degree of popularity in the 1960s, it has fallen out of use since the 1970s.