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 18 PREFACE

illustjativ purposes; and (in the body of the book) in the title^words, alternate spellings, cognate forms, etc. Clarified spelling is thus used not only because of its intrinsic merits but also in order to familiarize the reader with the fonetic value of certain letters.

In italic type, (g) has been used in this dictionary for (g) when not having the sound [g], [g]. Various other modifica- tions or clarifications are desirable in connection with the italic letters a, a, e, i, I, m, n, o, r, s, u, v, w, and y. They admit of being conformd to and differentiated aleng with the corresponding roman letters.

The double hyfen (?) has been used thruout this dictionary, except in the boldface type, as a substitute for the ordinary hyfen for joining the elements of compound words, etc.

Fonetic Spelling. The current spelling of English, along with that of other languages, is, in my opinion, likely to be replaced by one or more systems of fonetic spelling. Fonetic shorthand has alredy replaced or supplemented the current spelling for reportorial and other purposes. Various systems of roman^letter fonetic spelling have alredy supple- mented the current spelling in the respellings given in dic- tionaries and grammars. Fonetic texts are coming into com- mon use in schools, and young people will soon be using them in preference to texts printed in the current cacografy. Fo- netic spelling is used in the present volume in the respellings of the title^words, in the representation of their pronuncia- tion. For a more complete exposition of this subject the reader may refer to my Dictionary of Hard Words, publisht last year.

ROBERT MORRIS PIERCE 1019 Flatiron Bilding New York, March 3,

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