fic investigations of the words used in
writing letters. These investigations, taken together, represent the
careful analysis of over three-quarters of a million running words of
correspondence. If you will analyze one letter, you will see what a
very great amount of work these investigations have required. It seems
very unlikely that any word commonly and frequently used should have
been overlooked in all of these investigations.

These ten studies contain all of the information which is available at
the present time concerning what words are likely to be used in
writing letters. Accordingly, there is no word in this speller which
has not been reported in one or more of these investigations. In
addition, this vocabulary has been carefully compared with all of the
other types of reading and writing vocabularies.

Among these are the studies of children's themes, such as those by
Jones, by the teachers of New Orleans, Kansas City, and Richmond,
Virginia; the various studies of adult reading vocabularies, such as
those by Eldridge and Knowles, aggregating over 140,000 running words;
the studies of the vocabulary of school readers, such as those by
Packer, Housh, and Miller, aggregating over one-half million running
words. No word has been taken from these studies which did not occur
in the investigations of the vocabulary of personal and business
letters. On the other hand, these studies showed quite clearly that
the words found as the result of the analysis of three-quarters of a
million running words of correspondence are really basic in any
writing vocabulary.

If you will examine the book, you will see that most of the lessons are
numbered with arabic numerals. These lessons contain a minimum list of
3998 words found to be used most frequently. You will notice, also, that
beginning with grade three there are in each grade supplementary
lessons, marked S-1, S-2, etc. These lessons include 580 additional
words which are somewhat less frequently used. The supplementary lessons
are distributed by grades, so that pupils who finish the minimum work
for any grade will have additional lessons to study for the remainder of
the year. However, before undertaking these supplementary lessons, the
teacher should make sure that her pupils have learned thoroughly the
minimum list which contains the important words.

=Plan of Review.=--The provision for the complete elimination of
spelling errors is particularly efficient and thor