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The author of the Ormulum was a phonetist, and employed a special spelling of his own to represent not only the quality but the quantities of vowels and consonants—a circumstance which gives his work a peculiar value to the investigator.

Characteristically, he suggested that the best way to do it would be to scrap the whole thing and start afresh, and the prizewinner, a devoted English phonetist named Kingsley Read, did just that.