James Pitman

Who was James Pitman?

Sir James Pitman, KBE was a British businessman, civil servant, publisher, politician and spelling reformer.

Sir James was vitally concerned with the teaching of children to write the English language. His analysis of the teaching of handwriting to students, both in school by professional teachers, and at home by parents has several strong pedagogical theories in its intellectual background. Along with his analysis Pitman created a system of spelling that allows students to spell as words are pronounced. His major work on this topic is Alphabets and Reading: The Initial Teaching Alphabet.

His thorough work has been adapted for several other uses: teaching English as a second language to adults for pronunciation and handwriting purposes, use on the Internet by alternative orthographers of English, and aesthetic uses where the writer wants to play at the conjunction of signs or symbols, and alphabet-based writing. This latter use gives rise to an aesthetics and poetics of its own, as in the Owlbirdbet Crossover system adapted to the standard keyboard, where it is more widely accessible to Internet users.