Editing English-language spelling reform (section)

=== Unsuccessful reform proposers ===

* [[Orrm]], 12th century Augustine canon monk and eponymous author of the ''[[Ormulum]]'', in which he stated that, since he dislikes that people are mispronouncing English, he will spell words exactly as they are pronounced, and describes a system whereby vowel length and value are indicated unambiguously. He distinguished short vowels from long by doubling the following consonants, or, where this is not feasible, by marking the short vowels with a superimposed [[breve]] accent.
* [[Charles Butler (beekeeper)|Charles Butler]], British naturalist and author of the first natural history of bees: ''Đe Feminin' Monarķi'', 1634. He proposed that "men should write altogeđer according to đe sound now generally received", and espoused a system in which the h in digraphs was replaced with [[Bar (diacritic)|bars]].
* [[John Wilkins]], English Anglican bishop and natural philosopher, published ''An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language'', 1668, in which he proposed that {{Angle brackets|father}} should be spelt {{Angle brackets|fadher}}, among other things.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Failed Attempts to Reform English Spelling |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/spelling-suggestions-that-didnt-stick |access-date=2025-05-24 |website=www.merriam-webster.com |language=en}}</ref>
* [[Benjamin Franklin]], American innovator and revolutionary, added letters to the Roman alphabet for [[Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet|his own personal solution]] to the problem of English spelling in 1768.
* [[Robert Bridges]], British [[Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom|Poet Laureate]] from 1913 to 1930, devised a phonetic alphabet for English, as well as removing useless [[Silent e|silent 'e's]].<ref name=":3" /><ref>{{Cite journal |date=16 October 1913 |title=Robert Bridges' literary alphabet |url=https://archive.org/details/independent76newy/page/131/mode/1up |journal=The Independent |volume=76 |pages=131}}</ref>
* [[Robert R. McCormick]] (1880–1955), publisher of the [[Chicago Tribune|''Chicago Tribune'']], employed reformed spelling in his newspaper. The ''Tribune'' used simplified versions of some words, such as "altho" for "although".
* [[Mont Follick]], [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] (UK) Member of Parliament, [[Multilingualism|polyglot]] and author who preceded [[James Pitman|Pitman]] in drawing the English spelling reform issue to the attention of [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Parliament]] in 1949 and 1952. Favored replacing w and y with u and i.{{Citation needed|date=March 2025}}
* [[Isaac Asimov]], author, wrote several essays on language reform in which he proposed respelling all word-final [[Lexical set|{{Sc2|GOOSE}}]] as {{Angle brackets|oo}}, {{Angle brackets|night}} as {{Angle brackets|nite}} as well as reforming grammar.<ref name=":2" />
* [[Doug Everingham]], former Australian Labor politician and health minister in the [[Whitlam]] government, was a proponent of [[SR1]], which he used in ministerial correspondence.
* [[Valerie Yule]], clinical child psychologist and fellow of the [[Galton Institute]], was vice-president of The English Spelling Society and created [[Interspel]].{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}
* [[Anatoly Liberman]], professor in the Department of [[German language|German]], [[Scandinavia|Scandinavian]] and [[Dutch language|Dutch]] at the [[University of Minnesota]], has advocated for spelling reforms in his weekly column on word origins at the [[Oxford University Press]] blog.<ref>{{cite web |date=7 May 2014 |title=Casting a last spell: After Skeat and Bradley |url=http://blog.oup.com/2014/05/spelling-reform-after-skeat-and-bradley/ |access-date=9 August 2014 |website=The Oxford Etymologist |publisher=OUP}}</ref> He has expressed a desire to remove the letters 'c', 'q', and 'x', where possible.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Liberman |first=Anatoly |date=2022-07-06 |title=Spelling Reform and after |url=https://blog.oup.com/2022/07/spelling-reform-and-after/ |access-date=2025-04-02 |website=OUPblog |language=en}}</ref> Current president of the [[English Spelling Society]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Officers |url=http://spellingsociety.org/officers |access-date=16 October 2015 |website=The English Spelling Society}}</ref>
* [[John C. Wells]], former professor of [[phonetics]] at [[University College London]], is a former president of The [[English Spelling Society]] and advocated for [[SoundSpel|New Spelling]].{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}