Phonetic
or PHONETICAL, representing sound; pertaining to the representation of sounds; a term applied to alphabetic or literal characters which represent sounds, as a, b, c; as opposed to ideographic, which represent objects or symbolize abstract ideas, as in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Phonetic spelling, a system of spelling in which the words are spelled exactly as they are pronounced, the sounds being represented by characters each of which represents a single sound. Phonetic printing was first suggested by Isaac Pitman, of Bath, England, and reduced to a system by him in conjunction with A. J. Ellis, in the years 1843-1846. Since that time many systems of phonetic spelling have been proposed and several are used by stenographers in the United States.