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Featuring: Valerie Yule's InterSpel Proposal, Ian's Saund Spell, Steve's Chekt Spelling, Chris' Cut Spelling, and Taam's Truespell.  Other notational schemes may be added by their authors. Suggestions for additional dimensions or categories of comparison are also welcomed.
 

The evaluations should be those of the authors. To get things started, Steve has inserted the High or Low importance assessments. Suggestions for modifying the comparison categories and the goals of the scripts are welcomed. There is no particular order to the listed dimensions.

This table also isolates the dimensions of disagreement about the goals of a notational system.  There are different proposals primarily because there are different goals.  All of the systems are more regular and consistent than TO (traditional orthography)

Notes: numbers refer to line numbers in the table above

1.  Schwa - an unstressed central vowel - is represented in most reformed notations in a syllabic m-n-r-l unstressed endings.  [ litl, minimm, theatr]  It could also be represented the same way in one syllable words mm/mum, wn/won/one, wr/were.  The schwa is a stress indicator (#15) [ as in a'go and a'round].  This is not enough to indicate stress in many muli-syllable words.

2. While the author of ChektSpel3 thinks it is importat to have a unique schwa, CCS doesn't have it. Schwa is represented by [a'] [a'go, sofa', fota'graf],  r,  syllabic inclusion [litl], the i [langwij], and the schwapostrophe [pr'si5n].

4.  Speek 'n Spel: CS is not a phonemic system, it is based more on how English is spelled than on how it is pronounced.  Truespell is a spell as YOU speak system rather than a spell as a typical  television commentator or announcer speaks.  With CCS, you know you are spelling as the commentator speaks because you look it up in a pronunciation dictionary based on the commentator's dialect.

5. A narrow transcription should be possible in the event that one wants to write dialect, but this is not the way that a writing system is generally used. What is important is that the spelling is intelligible to speakers of different dialects - not that it captures their particular pronunciation.   SS and CCS are based directly on an IPA - BBC pronunciation dictionary. CCS has a way of accommodating both rhotic and non-rhotic speech. (r = schwa or schwa with R, 'r = R ending).

Questions and Answers

3. Wut leksikool speleeng?  Kan yue deeffien?  (Written in truespell)

All it means that the correct way of spelling a word is found in a dictionary so you can spell a word the way you pronounce it unless you happen to use the base pronunciation that was used to compile the dictionary.  Cut Spelling is a lexical system because the cuts are based on how the word is spelled in a standard dictionary.  In most cases, one needs to know how TO mispells a word before a better alternative, one without redudant letters, can be suggested.

A publisher has to have a standardized way of spelling a word in a given language. They would not be interested in any system that was not dictionary based.

5.  Ie doent noe wut nairoe transkrripshin iz.
6.  Ie doent noe wut braud dieyuffaanik iz.

These are polar opposites.  A narrow transcription captures dialects.  A broad transcriptions ignores dialects.

In CutSpelling, o refers not to one but to three sounds with the middle sound being AWE. If the letter is not marked, this should be a usable sound value.

shobot = would be pronounced /shawbawt/.  This might be close enough for people to recognize the reference.  If not, then a marker could be added sho'bo't.

Such an interpretation would be called broad diaphonic because it uses a single letter to cover 3 phonemes. In a broad transcription, phonemes (sound segments) may be merged.

It is like "one size fits all".  It doesn't really fit the extremes but it is close enough to get by.

The difference between this type of spelling and TO is that while not exactly or precisely phonemic, it is in the ball park.  [o] can be one of three different sounds but that is all. The middle sound in the range is usually an understandable pronunciation.

In TO awe is also an A sound.  Thus tok and wok are spelled talk and walk.  Wok the skillet is wo.k which would be nearly the same as waak.

"Wen Y awok, Y went on a wok tu get my wok." is an example of a broad transcription.  "We.n Y a'wo'k, Y we.nt on a' wok tu ge.t my wo.k" is a narrow transcription.

11.  Continental Spelling refers to European sound symbol correspondences
       such as ei, i:, ai, ou, ju   When /ei/ is spelled ay or ai or ae, it is using ideosyncratic
       English spelling rather than typical continental spelling for the sound.

14.  Elegance and Simplicity:  Ied giv truespel u big H heer.  Wut kood bee mor simpool and
       eligint than boiling doun aul laengwijiz intue 40 or soe kunssistint foeneemz? 

Truespell may be simpler and more elegant than TO, but it doesn't match the simplicity and elegance of other notations that are less ambitious in terms of what they try to encode.  TS is complex because it attempts to indicate stress.  TS is not elegant because it uses digraphs for non-diphthongs.
 
Sample Transcriptions For more examples check out the spelling converter.
 

As shown in the table above:  Truespell is the longest transcription, Checked Spelling is the shortest (the most space efficient).  Cut Spelling (CS) is the easiest to read without training or a key.  Phonemic spelling would be the easiest to spell for new learners.

Checked vowels are always short and always followed by a consonant.  In CCS, such vowels are marked by a mid-dot or under-dot or not marked at all when the word is well known, e.g., [in].  CCS is an ASCII IPA notation that uses symbols rather than letters that may have another sound association.  Thus leizhoor is spelled li2r.  where 2=zh.