Editing Deseret alphabet (section)

=== Decline (1869–1877) ===
{{Multiple image| align =
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Despite years of heavy promotion, the Deseret alphabet was never widely adopted. This reluctance was partly due to prohibitive costs; the project had already cost the early church $20,000,<ref name="Moore2006">{{Cite web|url=http://web.chem.ucla.edu/~jericks/Historical%20or%20Technical/History%20Looking%20Backwards/Magazine%20articles/The%20Religious%20Educator/Deseret%20Alphabet%20Experiment2.pdf|title=The Deseret Alphabet Experiment|last=Moore|first=Richard G.|year=2006|website=Religious Studies Center|publisher=Brigham Young University|access-date=2017-01-06|archive-date=31 January 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170131191507/http://web.chem.ucla.edu/~jericks/Historical%20or%20Technical/History%20Looking%20Backwards/Magazine%20articles/The%20Religious%20Educator/Deseret%20Alphabet%20Experiment2.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>{{rp|76}} with $6,000 going to Pratt as remuneration for his transcription effort<ref name="Simmonds1968">{{Cite news|url=http://web.chem.ucla.edu/~jericks/Historical%20or%20Technical/History%20Looking%20Backwards/Magazine%20articles/True%20Frontier/Utah's%20Strange%20Alphabet%20by%20A.%20J.%20Simmonds1968.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200729222045/http://web.chem.ucla.edu/~jericks/Historical%20or%20Technical/History%20Looking%20Backwards/Magazine%20articles/True%20Frontier/Utah's%20Strange%20Alphabet%20by%20A.%20J.%20Simmonds1968.pdf |archive-date=2020-07-29 |url-status=live|title=Utah's Strange Alphabet|last=Simmonds|first=A. J.|publisher=Major Magazines, Inc.|year=1968|location=Sparta, Illinois|access-date=2017-01-10}}</ref> and most of the rest going to cutting metal type featuring the new alphabet and printing costs.<ref name="Beesley2004" />{{rp|6}} In 1859, Orson Pratt estimated that the cost of supplying all [[Utah Territory]] [[History of education in the United States#Federal era|schoolchildren]] with suitable textbooks would be over $5,000,000.<ref name="Moore2006" />{{rp|76}}
[[File:Peoples Ticket, Salt Lake City, circa 1876, Mormons, front of.jpg|left|thumb|An 1876 [[Ticket (election)|campaign ticket]] for the [[People's Party of Utah]]. The Deseret type is recycled to make a border. The "words" in the border are [[gibberish]].]]
According to Beesley, many have written that interest in the Deseret alphabet died with Brigham Young. This, however, is not true; the alphabet was already regarded as a failure during Young's time.<ref name="Beesley2004" />{{rp|29}} Only 500 copies of the full ''Book of Mormon'' translated into the Deseret alphabet sold for $2 each, and even Young realized that the venture was too expensive and even the most devout Mormons could not be convinced to purchase and study the Deseret edition books over the books in the traditional orthography.<ref name="Wentz1978" /><ref name="Beesley2004" />{{rp|27}} In the winter of 1870, just one year after their publication, advertisements for the Deseret alphabet books were quietly removed from the ''Deseret News''.<ref name="Simmonds1968" />

Contemporary writers noted that thousands of copies of the 15¢ and 20¢ Deseret primers went unsold,<ref name="Beesley2004" />{{rp|6}} and historian Roby Wentz speculated that the LDS Church at that time had a "cache" of the primers in mint condition, which it was slowly selling off; according to him, one such primer sold for $250 in 1978.<ref name="Wentz1978" />

The Mormons had planned to use the profits from sale of the earlier books to fund printing of more books, and in anticipation Orson Pratt had already transcribed the complete [[Bible]], ''[[Doctrine and Covenants]]'', and [[John Jaques (Mormon)|John Jaques]]'s ''Catechism for Children''.<ref name="Zobell1967">{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/improvementera7007unse|title=The Improvement Era|last=Zobell |first=Albert L. Jr.|publisher=The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints|year=1967|volume=70|issue=7|location=Salt Lake City|pages=[https://archive.org/details/improvementera7007unse/page/n11 10]–11}}</ref> Pratt had also prepared an apparent sequel to the primers, the ''Deseret Phonetic Speller''. After the sales failure, however, none of these books were ever published and were thought lost until being rediscovered in a storage area of the LDS Church Archives in Salt Lake City in May 1967.<ref name="Simmonds1968" /><ref name="Zobell1967" />

Ralph Vigoda, a reporter for ''[[The Philadelphia Inquirer]]'', has speculated that the completion of the [[Transcontinental railroad]] may have contributed to the alphabet's downfall: non-Mormons, not loyal to Brigham Young, became a large part of the city, and without the religious motivation it would be difficult indeed to get them to learn a new alphabet.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/176073436/?terms=deseret%2Balphabet|title=A churchman's failed mission: Language logic|last=Vigoda|first=Ralph|date=3 June 1990|work=The Philadelphia Inquirer|page=2C|access-date=14 January 2017|via=Newspapers.com|archive-date=16 January 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170116183849/https://www.newspapers.com/image/176073436/?terms=deseret%2Balphabet|url-status=live}}</ref> In a retrospective piece, historian A. J. Simmonds claims that the new railroad doomed the alphabet. According to him, easy access to "the whole literature of the English speaking world" rendered the alphabet useless.<ref name="Simmonds1968" />

In July 1877, Young tried one more time at a spelling reform, ordering lead type designed for the orthography of [[Benn Pitman]] (Isaac's brother) with the intention of printing an edition of the ''Book of Mormon'' and ''Doctrine and Covenants'' using it. Most of the type had arrived by August, but with Young's death, the translation was never undertaken and the type never used. Young's death thus marked the end of the Mormon experimentation with English spelling reforms.<ref name="Moore2006" /><ref name="Beesley2004" />{{rp|29}}