Help page for The English Alphabetic Code charts

Chart organization

The table organizes the Grapheme—Phoneme Correspondences (hereafter as GPC) for English. Each row is dedicated to one sound. The first 5 cells in each row supply various information about each row. The IPA column gives an IPA character that represents the sound. Clicking on the IPA cell plays the sound for that row. Thereafter, each cell in the row represents a spelling pattern used in English to represent that sound in order from greatest number of words to lowest. This chart reflects a general Canadian pronunciation of English. Other regional English accents would have slightly different arrangements if they were charted.

Clicking on column headers sorts the table by that column. Clicking on the same column header a second time reverses the sort.

  1. The first column is a row number. Clicking on the word “Row” at the top of the column allows you to get back to the original sort order. The original sort order is a very rough approximation of the alphabetical order.
  2. The second column contains a number which refers to how many spelling patterns that row contains. Clicking on the 2nd column header sorts the chart by the number of spelling patterns each row has.
  3. The third column contains a number which refers to a coloured cell in that row with the greatest number of words (the number in red). This is always the left-most cell of spelling patterns. Clicking on the 3rd column header sorts the chart by left-most column of spelling patterns’ number. This gives an indication of the frequency of occurence of the most common spelling patterns.
  4. The fourth column contains a number which refers to the total number of words associated with all the spelling patterns in that row. Clicking on the 4th column header sorts the chart the total number of words in each row. This effectively gives an indication of the frequency of the sounds in the words in the chart.
  5. The fifth column contains a short label which categorizes the sound type. This allows you to group the rows into similar types of sounds. KEY: vl=long vowel; vs=short vowel; vr=‘r-coloured’ vowel; vd=vowel diphthong; cs=consonant stop; cd=consonant diphthong; cn=consonant nasal; cf=consonant fricative; ca=consonant approximate.

Coloured Cells

Cells can contain a variety of information. Every cell contains one spelling form (GPC) and a keyword which illustrates that spelling form. If there are 1 syllable words associated with that cell or page, the spelling form and keyword are hyperlinked. Clicking on them reveals the words associated with that form in the textbox on the sidebar. Each cell also has a number in red. This refers to the total number of words associated with that spelling form. Pages with multisyllablic words will also have additional links composed of 0’s and a 1’s. The numbers refer to the stress pattern of the words, with 1 being stress and 0 being non-stressed. Each cell is coloured to indicate how many words each cell has. The darkest colour is for high (50+ words), the medium colour is mid (10-49 words), and the light colour is for low (1-9 words). The cells in each row are sorted by the number of words each cell represents, with the greatest on the left and the least on the right.

Navigation

Links to related pages appear below the page title. Pages are dedicated to words of the same syllable number or group. Each page has the same functionality except for the 1 syllable sight word page which includes several lists of words in the “Calculate” section of the sidebar which can be mapped onto the GPC table.

Sidebar

Collapsing Headers

Clicking on a header word or arrow expands or collapses that sidebar category.

Legend

The colours give you a quick view of how many words each category has. Low is for 1-9 words; Mid is for 10-49 words; High is for 50+ words. The numbers in red refer to how many words a particular GPC category contains.

Textbox

The textbox has 2 functions. 1) Clicking on links in the GPC table will display the associated vocabulary list in this textbox. The total number of words in the box is displayed at the top of the box. 2) Any word or words you paste into the textbox can be “ mapped” onto the GPC table by pasting and then clicking the “Map Words” button under the “Calculate” section. The kinds of things this is useful for include inputting the words of a story to see the kinds of spelling patterns it contains or inputting a list of words from a reading assessment to see which GPCs a child can read. To remove the words that have been “mapped” onto the table click the “Clear” button under the “Calculate” section or press F5, or click the “Reload” button of your web browser.

Sort

This sorts the words in the textbox. There are 2 options; to sort alphabetically or to sort by cv pattern.

Printable List

Clicking this link presents the words in the textbox on a new page which is more suitable for printing.

Cols

This controls how many columns your printing page should have.

Calculate

Map Words

Clicking this button allows you to “map” any words in the textbox to the GPC table on the right. A word is mapped when it contains a spelling pattern that matches the GPC on the chart. When a word has been “mapped” the cell is highlighted to indicate a hit and the word is added to the cell. For long lists this process may take a while, depending on the speed of your computer.

Clear

Clicking this button clears the highlight from the cells and removes the “mapped” words from the cell.

Count Visible Cells

Clicking this button brings up an alert box which states how many cells are visible in the GPC table on the right. If you hide rows or columns in the “Show Rows” section you can count how many cells are visible using this button.

Count Highlights

Clicking this button brings up an alert box which states how many cells are highlighted in the GPC table on the right.

Remove Highlights

Clicking this button removes any highlights from the chart.

Find GPCs

If you input a valid GPC code into the textbox and click this button it will highlight the corresponding cell in the chart. A valid GPC code has the format of “phoneme_grapheme” (eg. b_bb,f_ph,k_ck, etc.). Alternately, if you type a letter into the textbox area and click this button all the cells containing the letter in the spelling pattern will be highlighted. For example: if you type a hyphen “-” into the textbox and click the button, all the cells with split digraphs (a-e, i-e, etc.) will get highlighted.

Collect GPCs

Clicking this button extracts the GPC codes from highlighted cells in the chart and places them into a “Residue” textbox. This allows you to get a list of the unique GPC codes from a list of words. This list of GPC codes can be copied into the textbox and then click Find GPCs to just highlight the cells without the words being inserted into the cells.

Show Rows

By default all the categories are checked and visible in the GPC table. To remove any category from the chart simply uncheck a checkbox. This allows you to create customized views of the chart. Selecting the checkboxes again makes the cells visible again.

Super Patterns

This section allows you to highlight cells in the chart based on various pre-selected criteria. Selecting a checkbox highlights the appropriate GPC cell(s) in the GPC table.

Other links

These links change the appearance of the chart. “Illiterate view” only works with modern browsers which have implemented css based font downloading (so far only Firefox 3.5+). The PDF icon links to a downloadable pdf file of the displayed chart.