Editing Shavian alphabet (section)

=== Haha–Hung reversal ===
The most frequent disagreement of the letter reversals has been over the Haha–Hung pair. The most convincing evidence suggesting this reversal is in the names of the letters: the unvoiced letter Haha is deep, while the voiced Hung, which suggests a lower position, is tall. This is often assumed to be a clerical error introduced in the rushed printing of the Shavian edition of ''Androcles and the Lion''.{{Citation needed|date=August 2007}} This reversal obscures the system of tall letters as voiceless consonants and deep letters as voiced consonants.

Proponents of traditional Shavian, however, have suggested that Kingsley Read may not have intended for this system to be all-encompassing, though it seems that vertical placement alone served this purpose in an earlier version of Shavian, before the rotations were introduced. Also, Read may have intentionally reversed these letters, perhaps to emphasize that these letters represent unrelated sounds, which happen to occur in [[complementary distribution]].

Both sides of the debate have suggested other reasons, including associations with various styles of [[Latin script|Latin]] letters (namely, the {{Angle bracket|g}} in {{Angle bracket|-ing}}, often written with a bottom-loop in script) and the effect of letter-height on the coastlines of words, but whether Read considered any of these is uncertain. Since the letter representing the same sound in Read's [[Quikscript]] appears identical to "Hung", it is doubtful that Read reversed the letter twice by mistake. Either he always intended that letter shape or he thought it best to leave things as they were, especially as a corrected {{Angle bracket|ng}} in hasty or careless writing might be confused with Hung "𐑣".{{Citation needed|date=August 2007}}