Advantages

Whether you’re creating a business proposal, taking notes in a lecture, or recording your life’s experiences in a journal, Newrite provides you with an efficient writing method that you will read with ease many years from now.

The four main advantages of the Newrite notation system are:
Accuracy – the ability to precisely record the spoken word in writing
Versatility – the flexibility to reflect the complex nuances of languages
Simplicity – easy signs that use natural, efficient hand motions
Speed – the capacity to write faster than longhand

These advantages are achieved by a few important features of the Newrite system. The most obvious of these is that Newrite completely replaces the roman alphabet with a phonetically based system. This means that instead of our current 26 letter alphabet, Newrite uses a system of signs that stand for complete sounds.

Roman letters are based on Latin and have remained unchanged for more than 2,000 years. English has evolved into a sophisticated, diverse and complex language that incorporates sounds and spellings from a number of different languages. Using an ancient writing system to record modern English creates numerous difficulties. For example, the correlation between English spelling and pronunciation is worse than that of any other major European language. More than half of English words contain some exception to common spelling rules! Newrite’s array of signs allows users to capture the range of sounds present in the English languages without sacrificing consistency.

Another important feature of the Newrite system is the simplicity of its signs. Many roman letters are comprised of multiple downstrokes and upstrokes. For example, the cursive letter m has five distinct hand motions: three downstrokes alternating with two upstrokes. Imagine how much fast you could write if each letter had fewer strokes. Each Newrite sign consists of one downstroke, significantly increasing writing speed.

Even better than reducing each letter to one downstroke Newrite uses single downstrokes to represent commonly used letter or (thinking phonetically) sound combinations such as SH, ST, NCH and common prefixes and suffixes such as mis- and -tion.

Going one step further, Newrite also has signs that stand for complete words. In Newrite these signs are called shortforms. They represent commonly used words such as to, and, with, that and when. You can download a set of shortform flashcards from the learning aids page.