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Updating the Group Description #meta

Nathan Galt
 

Welcome to the new home of the Quikscript group!

I had a second look at the Group Description and thought it could use a little polishing-up. Here’s what I thought needed some work:

  • Stop doubling up the phrase “Group Description”.
  • Scrub out the phrase “Read Alphabet”, as we don’t need to use it to establish continuity with the group title.
  • Get a photo of Read or stop referring to a nonexistent photo.
  • The “Computer fonts were designed…” bit seems downright archaic.
  • I prefer using the term “Latin script”, but this may be fine.
  • “Fonts, keyboard layouts, and other files that will help you read and write in Quikscript”
  • “A copy of the Quikscript manual that was written and distributed by Kingsley Read in the early 1970s.” ← This should probably be #2.
  • The “To have your browser read texts” part should be edited heavily, as browsers can serve up fonts alongside web pages now (“web fonts”).

So, here’s my minimal crack at an update:

✂︎

This group is devoted to spreading knowledge and appreciation of Quikscript and promoting its use in all forms of communication in English.  Quikscript is an elegant and efficient way to write and communicate in English. Because each letter represents just one English sound, texts written in the alphabet use two-thirds or less of the space required by the same texts written in the Roman alphabet.

Kingsley Read designed Shavian and won a contest for the design of a new English alphabet. After testing, he modified and improved it and introduced the innovative Read Alphabet in the 1970s. He called it Quikscript, because it is fast when written with pen or pencil. The alphabet was extensively tested by English speakers around the world who found it worked very well. In the early 1970s, Kingsley Read wrote and distributed a manual that explains the alphabet, its rules, and how to get fluent in it.

In 2000, the Read Alphabet group began on Yahoo Groups. In 2019, the group moved to groups.io.

Now you can learn the Read Alphabet and experience a better to way to write English. If you find it useful in your daily life, please share it with your friends and help spread the word that there is a better way to write English than continuing to use the Roman alphabet, which was adapted to the sounds of Latin over 2000 years ago. It never really fit the sounds of English well at all since there were not nearly enough symbols for English vowels.

Here is a partial list of what you will find in this group:

- Discussion in and about the Read Alphabet
- A copy of the Quikscript manual
- Files that will help you to learn to read and write in Quikscript
- Fonts and keyboard layouts that will let you write in Quikscript on a computer

✂︎

If you’re looking for a banner image that spreads across the top of a page well, may I suggest <https://www.quikscript.net/Images/travels-with-a-donkey-300--20deg-75pct.png>?
Nathan Galt
 

Incidentally, I sent this on October 31 at 9 PM. I’m getting this back in my inbox on…November 2 at 12:45 PM. If you’d like to recreate the leisurely pacing of physical-mail conversations without the hassle of printing letters out and licking stamps, do it now before groups.io gets back to normal!

On Oct 31, 2019, at 9:08 PM, Nathan Galt <mailinglists@...> wrote:

Welcome to the new home of the Quikscript group!

I had a second look at the Group Description and thought it could use a little polishing-up. Here’s what I thought needed some work:
Nathan Galt
 

…and this e-mail was sent and received within a minute or two. Guess groups.io isn’t straining under load like I thought.

On Nov 2, 2019, at 12:53 PM, Nathan Galt <mailinglists@...> wrote:

Incidentally, I sent this on October 31 at 9 PM. I’m getting this back in my inbox on…November 2 at 12:45 PM. If you’d like to recreate the leisurely pacing of physical-mail conversations without the hassle of printing letters out and licking stamps, do it now before groups.io gets back to normal!

On Oct 31, 2019, at 9:08 PM, Nathan Galt <mailinglists@...> wrote:

Welcome to the new home of the Quikscript group!

I had a second look at the Group Description and thought it could use a little polishing-up. Here’s what I thought needed some work:
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