It was originally published in October 1843 in The Phonotypic Journal, a sister publication of The Phonetic Journal, and first "completed" in June 1845 (though there were several subsequent revisions). Further adaptations were published which extended the alphabet to the German, Arabic, Spanish, Tuscan, French, Welsh, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese and Sanskrit languages.
Purpose
The philosophical case for the EPA was made by Ellis, who conducted an extensive study of the problems with English orthography, which he published in his treatisePlea for Phonetic Spelling, or the Necessity of Orthographic Reform, in 1848. Learned societies such as the London Philological Society and education journals such as The Massachusetts Teacher debated the arguments for reform and the utility of the EPA.
Letters
The EPA had many different letter systems, depending on the author. Below are two early examples.
1843
At this stage, long vowels had a cross-bar, and short vowels did not. There were also no lowercase letterforms; only capital forms were used.
↑⟨Ʌ⟩ may conceivably represent /a/ rather than /æ/ in dialects with the more open pronunciation.
↑The two forms of the "obscure vowel" are evidently ambiguous. The words a (article) and serve are written with ⟨Ǝ⟩, the words specimen and gladness are written with ⟨⟩, and the word the is written with both (in separate instances).
↑The diphthong /ɔɪ/ did not have its own letter in this edition, but gains one in subsequent editions. Here it is written with ⟨OƗ⟩ in the word joyful and ⟨ƟƗ⟩ in the word noise.
1847
Letters of the English phonotypic Alphabet (1847)
Additional letters for other languages (1845)
The American version of the alphabet (1855), as reprinted in a medical dictionary in 1871. The vowel letters evidently differ from the 1847 alphabet.
In 1855, Ɑɑ was provided for the short "ask" vowel. It was the usual way of writing the article "a", and was found in "abaft". It's not clear how it was supposed to be distinct from Aa for the TRAP vowel, which was found in "am" and "abash". It was also found as the first vowel in "articulate", whereas ɋ was intended for the vowel of "arm".
There was a sequence ai/i in 1856 and 1860–64 for the diphthong in the word "aye"/"ay", as distinct from the vowel in "by".
Scots also had the letters ꬰ and , as well as diacritics.
The New Testament was published in 1864 but used the 1855 alphabet, perhaps due to the length of time it took to typeset it.
Consonants
/θðŋ/ were written with the same letters throughout –⟨⟩, approx. ⟨đ⟩, and ⟨ŋ⟩– though the forms varied somewhat.
The affricates however were reanalyzed. From 1847 to 1855, /ʃʒ/ and /tʃdʒ/ were written ⟨ʃ ʒ⟩ and ⟨ꞔ j⟩, respectively. In 1856, these four letters were reduced to two, for ⟨c j⟩ and ⟨tc dj⟩, and in 1860 were changed to ⟨ꞔ j⟩ and ⟨tꞔ dj⟩.
Vowels in the alphabet shown in Longley's First Phonetic Reader.
The ultimate objective of the EPA was to improve literacy levels; as such, to demonstrate its efficacy, it was trialled for teaching literacy in many different settings. It was mainly tried in schools with children but also illiterate inmates of workhouses, reformatories and jails and by missionaries in Africa, China & India. In 1849, its potential was shown when 1,300 Mancunian illiterates were taught to read and write in only a few months.
These trials culminated in the adoption of the EPA in two public school districts in the United States: Waltham, Massachusetts, between 1852–60 and Syracuse, New York, between 1850–66. Both districts used a variant of the EPA known as the Cincinnati Phonotypy or the American Phonetic Alphabet. This type was used by Longley Brothers to publish a set of reading-books: a first phonetic reader, a second phonetic reader, and a transition reader.
Waltham
In the 1852–53 annual report of Waltham's school committee, the chairman, Reverend Thomas Hill, reported the effect of learning the EPA on the 800 pupils within the ten schools:
It has been proved in repeated experiment that if a child upon his first learning his letters, is taught the Phonetic Alphabet, and is confined to Phonetic books for the first six to eight months of schooling, he will at the end of the first year's schooling read common print and spell in common spelling better than children will ordinarily do at the end of four or five year's instruction.
Syracuse
An introduction in Longley's Transition Reader explains the importance of literacy in both standard Roman script and phonetic script.
Bothe's analysis of the course of study for the Syracuse school district measured the improvement from using the EPA:
In 1855, before the introduction of the transitional alphabet, the student was expected to finish reading Webb's Second Reader by the end of the third grade. In 1858, the first year in which phonetic texts appeared in the course of study, Webb's Second Reader was entirely completed two-thirds through the second grade (four trimesters gained).
Leigh's Pronouncing Orthography
Edwin Leigh extensively practised using the EPA to teach literacy. He became persuaded of its efficacy and a passionate advocate but failed to convince his own St. Louis school district to adopt it. He concluded that the EPA was not widely accepted because parents, teachers, and district officials could not understand the orthography themselves. Leigh subsequently designed a spiritual successor system, Pronouncing Orthography, in an attempt to address some of these flaws.
Unicode
Additional Unicode characters for EPA were encoded with the release of Unicode 18.0 in 2026:
U+A7DDLATIN CAPITAL LETTER CLOSED OMEGA
U+1DF68LATIN CAPITAL LETTER PHONOTYPIC A WITH SWASH
U+1DF69LATIN SMALL LETTER PHONOTYPIC A WITH SWASH
U+1DF6ALATIN CAPITAL LETTER PHONOTYPIC ROUNDTOP A
U+1DF6BLATIN SMALL LETTER PHONOTYPIC ROUNDTOP A
U+1DF6CLATIN CAPITAL LETTER REVERSED SCRUPLE
U+1DF6DLATIN SMALL LETTER REVERSED SCRUPLE
U+1DF6ELATIN CAPITAL LETTER PHONOTYPIC DIPHTHONG AI
U+1DF6FLATIN SMALL LETTER PHONOTYPIC DIPHTHONG AI
U+1DF70LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH PIGTAIL AT BOTTOM
U+1DF71LATIN SMALL LETTER STRETCHED I
U+1DF72LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH CURL
U+1DF73LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH CURL
U+1DF74LATIN CAPITAL LETTER CLOSED OMEGA WITH LONG STEM
U+1DF75LATIN SMALL LETTER CLOSED OMEGA WITH LONG STEM
U+1DF76LATIN CAPITAL LETTER TURNED CLOSED OMEGA
U+1DF77LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED CLOSED OMEGA
U+1DF78LATIN CAPITAL LETTER PHONOTYPIC TH
U+1DF79LATIN SMALL LETTER PHONOTYPIC TH
U+1DF7ALATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH HOOK TAIL
U+1DF7BLATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH HOOK TAIL
U+1DF7CLATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH NOTCH AT BOTTOM
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Letters of the English phonotypic Alphabet (1847)
Additional letters for other languages (1845)
The American version of the alphabet (1855), as reprinted in a medical dictionary in 1871. The vowel letters evidently differ from the 1847 alphabet.
