Communpedia:Pronunciation respelling key

This (prə-'-see-'-shən ree--ing kee) is used in some Wikipedia articles to spell out the pronunciations of English words. It does not use special symbols or diacritics apart from the, "ə", which is used for the a in about.

It should be noted that the standard set of symbols used to show the pronunciation of English words in Wikipedia is the (IPA). The IPA has significant advantages over the respelling system described here, as it can be used to accurately represent pronunciations from any language in the world, and (being an international standard) is often more familiar to non-native speakers of English. On the other hand, the IPA (being designed to represent sounds from any language in the world) is not as intuitive for those chiefly familiar with English orthography, for whom this respelling system is likely to be easier for English words and names. Articles often provide pronunciations in both systems (see documentation at "Template:Respell" for an example).

Syllables and stress
Syllables are separated by hyphens ("-"). The stress on a syllable is indicated by writing the syllable in.

Optional sounds
When a certain sound is pronounced by some speakers but not by others, the sound is put inside parentheses (round brackets). It is correct to say the word either with or without the sound. For example, the respelled pronunciation of the word fuchsia is "-sh(i)ə". It can either be pronounced "-shi-ə" or "-shə".