What Happens When You Spell Everything The Way It Sounds?

Exploring the visual power of words.

The other day, I came across a video of a young person lamenting that we do not spell words the way they sound, thus making the English language overly complex. It prompted me to wonder whether any books were written phonetically, so I initiated a conversation with Gemini. I thought I’d share an edited version of our conversation with you.

Me: Could you convert a sentence phonetically?

Gemini: Which convention should we use?

1. IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet): The standard system for representing sounds. Example: /həˈloʊ haʊ ɑːr ju/
2. Pronunciation Respelling (Dictionary Style): Uses familiar letters and “diacritics” (dots or bars) like you see in Merriam-Webster. Example: *\hə-ˈlō haʊ ˈär ˈyü*
3. Newspaper Respelling (Phonetic “Sound-Outs”): Often used in news scripts; it avoids special symbols and uses CAPITAL LETTERS for stress. Example: huh-LOH HOW-ar-YOO
4. Arpabet: Developed for computer speech (Siri/Alexa) using only standard keyboard characters. Example: HH AH L OW HH AW ER Y UW
5. X-SAMPA: A “hardcore” keyboard version of the IPA for computer precision. Example: /h@”loU/

Me: Wow. I had no idea so many conventions existed. Can you convert the following sentence into both Newspaper Respelling and IPA?

“Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there lived a man who would only spell using newspaper-style respelling.”

Gemini:

• Newspaper Respelling: wunss uh-PON uh TYM in uh LAND FAR FAR uh-WAY, THAIR LIVD uh MAN HOO WOOD OHN-lee SPEL YOO-zing NOOZ-pay-pur STYL ree-SPEL-ing.
• IPA: /wʌns əˈpɒn ə taɪm ɪn ə lænd fɑːr fɑːr əˈweɪ, ðɛər lɪvd ə mæn huː wʊd ˈoʊnli spɛl ˈjuːzɪŋ ˈnuːzˌpeɪpər staɪl riːˈspɛlɪŋ/

Me: Has anyone ever written a book that used the Newspaper Respelling as prose?

Gemini: There are a few famous examples where authors “break” spelling for narrative effect:

1. Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks: One character writes entirely phonetically (e.g., using “4” for “for”). Once your brain “clicks,” you can read it quite fast.
2. Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban: Set post-apocalypse where English has “broken down.” Example: “I dont think it matters what the idear of the thing is…”
3. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh: Uses phonetic respelling to capture a heavy Scottish (Edinburgh) accent.
4. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Phonetic Editions): There are actually editions printed entirely in IPA!

Me: The writers who chose to write phonetically seem to have had a narrative reason for doing so, which makes sense.

Gemini: You’re right—it’s a tool to pull the reader into a character’s mind. When you read phonetically, you’re “hearing” a performance. Here is how some famous lines land when spelled phonetically:

1. Moby Dick (Herman Melville)

• Newspaper Style: “KALL mee ISH-may-el.”
• Original: “Call me Ishmael.”

2. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)

• Newspaper Style: “it wuz dhuh BEST uv TYMZ, it wuz dhuh WURST uv TYMZ…”
• Original: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

3. The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)

• Newspaper Style: “in uh HOLE in dhuh GROWND thair LIVD uh HOB-it.”
• Original: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

Me: I think it’s funny how my impression of the words changes. The Dickens line reads almost remedially.

Gemini: That’s because standard spelling has a visual “shape” we respect—a concept called 

Orthographic Aesthetics. This is the idea that the specific arrangement of letters carries emotional weight independent of sound. When we strip that away:

1. The Phonetic Bias: We associate “sound-it-out” spelling with children’s workbooks. The “prestige” of the literature evaporates.
2. Loss of Visual Elegance: Words like thought or cities lose their architectural beauty and become purely functional.
3. The “Voice” Changes: Phonetic spelling often makes the narrator sound more casual or aggressive.

Me: Let’s try a line from Shakespeare.

Gemini: * Original: “To be, or not to be: that is the question.”

• Newspaper Style: “too BEE, or NOT too BEE: THAT iz dhuh KWES-chun.”
  It sounds less like a prince contemplating existence and more like someone giving very aggressive instructions on how to use a beehive!

Me: Yeah, it sounds almost illiterate.

Gemini: It’s a paradox: it’s a perfect representation of the sounds, but it looks “illiterate” because it ignores the rules of literacy. It’s like an X-ray of a person—100% accurate, but not the “person” we’re used to seeing.

Me: Let’s do an Edgar Allan Poe one. Perhaps The Raven.

Gemini: When you take the “shadow” out of Poe’s spelling, the results are… surprisingly bouncy.

• The Raven (Original): “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,”
• The Raven (Newspaper): “wunss uh-PON uh MID-nyt DREER-ee, WYL I PON-durd, WEEK and WEER-ee,”

The Verdict: In the original, “dreary” and “weary” feel heavy. In the newspaper version, DREER-ee and WEER-ee sound like names for a pair of cartoon ducks. The “doom” evaporates! It’s amazing how much “darkness” is carried by a silent E.

Me: “Bouncy” is the perfect word for it!!!

This is where our conversation ended. I hope you enjoyed this nerdy deep-dive as much as I did. We can now see that if we spell words phonetically, we would lose the orthographic aesthetics (the visual subtext that shapes our impressions of a story). While writing that way might make for some innovative prose, we’d lose the visual “skin” that gives our words their soul.

Do you know of any other stories that were written phonetically? If so, share them in the comments.

Nicole Criona