Notes are kept in this browser on this device. A backup file carries them to another device.

On a phone you can also press and hold the image to save or send it.

English uses the spelling you picked from the strip or typed on a keyboard. A word written only by its sounds shows its English when exactly one word has those sounds; a word that shares its sounds with another (see, sea), or sounds that make no word, come out as sounds between slashes. Pasting English into this keyboard brings back the Stemsyl, and a backup file keeps everything.

A box with the Latin keys under it: type (or paste) English, and Insert writes each word in Stemsyl at the cursor. A word that isn’t in the word list is skipped, and you can spell it with the sound keys. You can also type English straight into the note with the Latin keys, or paste it onto the page.

Up voiceless · centred the family’s sonorant · down voiced. The families run round the colour wheel from the tongue tip to the back of the mouth, so a misread lands on a related sound.

The vowels take six rainbow colours plus grey, two each: red a · eye, orange ah · ow, yellow e · ay, green i · ee, blue u · oo, grey uh · aw, violet oh · oy. Centred is the plain vowel, up glides to i, down glides to u.

Each sound is one tick: pick where it goes, then its colour. The top row of keys is a consonant’s tick — up, centred or down — and the middle row a vowel’s. Tapping one shows its colours; picking a colour writes that sound and brings the tick positions back (✕ goes back without writing). The bottom row deletes, adds a space and starts a new line.

Hold the middle key of an edge to bring up other keys: the top one for numbers (123), the left one for punctuation (?!), the right one for the options (opt) and the bottom one for cursor keys (↔). A key’s corner shows what holding it brings up; the keys showing now have their label filled in. Hold the centre key to come back to your letters (the tick positions, or the Latin letters if that’s what you were typing), from any other keys or from a colour or group you’ve changed your mind about. On the letters themselves, holding the centre switches between the tick positions and the Latin letters. The options are the buttons a bigger screen keeps along the top: Notes, Title, Share, View (the note in Stemsyl, English or IPA), Menu (this page), Under (English, IPA or nothing under each word), Undo, New note, and smaller or larger glyphs (A− · A+).

Latin letters. Tap a group of letters, then the letter. ⇧ makes the next letter a capital (a capital in the middle of a sentence marks a name), and ' goes inside a word, as in don’t. As you type, the word strip offers words that begin with your letters; tapping one, or space, a new line or punctuation, writes the word in Stemsyl. A word that isn’t in the word list stays typed, for you to fix. The same keys type the note’s Title and the English you Write from the menu, in a box at the top of the screen.

Swipe sideways across the keys to move the cursor. The note is one line along the top that follows the cursor (a new line shows as ↵); swipe it sideways to read back. Hold it to see the whole note over the watch face, many lines at once. There, tap a spot to put the cursor there — a bar with delete, space and new line comes up for small fixes — and hold anywhere on the note to go back to the keys.

Clearing. Hold delete (⌫) to clear all the text: the key fills red, and when you’ve held it for a moment the note is cleared. Undo, in the options, brings it back. In a text box, holding delete empties the box.

The note groups the sounds of a word into syllables by itself: each vowel takes the consonant just before it on its left and the one just after it on its right. Any other consonant stands on a short stub of its own.

After the sounds of a word, the word strip (above the keys, or below them: Menu › Word strip) offers the English words that sound like it, and longer words that begin with it. When exactly one English word has the sounds you wrote, its spelling goes under the glyphs and into Copy English by itself. Words that share their sounds with another (see, sea; to, two, too) stay as sounds until you tap one — except eye alone, which is always I, and uh alone, which is always a. After the ◆ name mark, names count too, so Jon and John wait for your choice. Tapping a longer word finishes the word; the note itself shows only the sounds.

The ◆ name mark goes before a name, where English uses a capital letter; pasting English, or typing it on a physical keyboard, adds it. Numerals are dice on a 3 × 3 grid — count the lit squares.

The whole app fits the screen of the 46 mm Apple Watch Series 12, 208 × 248 points (416 × 496 pixels), and shrinks to fit a smaller one, such as the 42 mm’s 187 × 223.

Type English. Each word turns into its sounds when you press space, Enter or a punctuation key. A capital letter in the middle of a sentence adds the name mark. Digits type numerals. Arrows move the cursor; ⌘/Ctrl-Z undoes.

Copyright (C) 1993-2015 Carnegie Mellon University. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
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1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
   The contents of this file are deemed to be source code.

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This work was supported in part by funding from the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, the Office of Naval Research and the National
Science Foundation of the United States of America, and by member
companies of the Carnegie Mellon Sphinx Speech Consortium. We acknowledge
the contributions of many volunteers to the expansion and improvement of
this dictionary.

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English Speller Database (ESDB, previously SCOWL)
Copyright 2000-2026 by Kevin Atkinson

Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell any part of the English
Speller Database (ESDB, previously known as SCOWLv2), or word lists
created from it, is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above
copyright notice appears in all copies and that both the above copyright
notice and this notice appear in supporting documentation.  Kevin Atkinson
makes no representations about the suitability of this database for any
purpose.  It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.