190. New Kind Of Practise Recommended

The student who has thus far carefully studied the text and illustrations and who has mastered the writing exercises, is prepared to benefit by practise of a new kind; that is, copying into phonography connected matter taken, say, from any well-written English book or from the editorial page of a daily newspaper, and also, writing from dictation such matter at a rate of speed just within his power to follow the reader and write accurately. In writing such matter he will, of course, come upon many words not contained in the writing exercises of this Manual, but if these writing exercises have been faithfully practised and truly mastered, the student will have acquired a thorough familiarity with all the leading principles of outline formation and will write most of these new words without hesitation.

191. Variety Of Outlines Possible

Occasionally, however, he will meet with problems which will have to be solved. Since t, d,f, v, s, z, sh, zh, I, r, n, w, y and h are represented in phonography in more than one way, it is evident that many words may be written with several possible outlines. The word abbreviation, for instance, has no less than twenty-one possible forms, though not more than two of these can be considered as in any way available in practise.

192. Initial And Final Consonants

The observant student of the foregoing pages will have recognized the fact that most of the rules respecting outline formation therein given are such as apply to the manner of writing the first and last consonants of outlines. See paragraphs 56, 57, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 81, 93, 94, 96, 102, 105, 106, 107, no, 115, 126, 145, 147, 148, 170. These rules are sufficiently extensive in their application to leave little, if any, doubt as to how to write initial and final consonants.

193. Medial Consonants

No hard and fast rules can be formulated for determining the manner of writing those consonants which lie between the first and last consonants of any word. In many, indeed most, cases it is the necessary result of the kind of phonographic material available for writing the word. In certain cases, however, the medial consonant is capable of se'veral forms of expression and the learner may sometimes well be in doubt in determining whether to express medial consonants by means of appendages and