The Deseret Alphabet had a number of goals -- or, more accurately, its proponents used a number of arguments to foster its use, and not all of them were compatible. The main advantage was perceived as boosting literacy, making English easier to learn both for Mormon immigrants from non-English speaking countries and children. It would also cut Mormons off from the damaging literature of the outside world, and at the same time, show the world the wonders which the Mormon people could achieve.

The name of the alphabet is derived from a term in the Book of Mormon, a volume of LDS scripture. "Deseret" is said to mean "honeybee," and was adopted by the earlier Mormons as a symbol of the busy, purposeful lives they intended to live. In particular, they termed the region they settled "the State of Deseret"; the current name of "Utah" was imposed by the US government.

The alphabet was designed in the early 1850's by English immigrant George D. Watt, who had some familiarity with Isaac Pitman's method of shorthand. The Church began promoting it at once -- some people kept journals or wrote letters using it, it appeared on street signs and storefronts, and even on coins.

By 1859, the Church had managed to secure a font for the Deseret Alphabet. In 1859, 1860, and 1864, the Deseret News (the Mormon Church's official newspaper) published scriptural passages using it. Young was unsatisfied with the font, however, and a new one was commissioned, completed by 1868, when four books were published: Three primers (two based on the McGuffie readers, and the third selections from the Book of Mormon), and the entire Book of Mormon. The Bible and other Mormon scriptures were transcribed, but never published.

Despite heavy promotion by Brigham Young, however, the new alphabet never caught on. The Mormon rank-and-file showed little inclination to abandon the Latin alphabet in its favor, and the cost of providing custom typefaces limited the amount of published material that could be produced.

After Young's death in 1877, the movement to use the Deseret Alphabet collapsed. Church leaders who followed him were both too lukewarm themselves and too preoccupied;pressure from the US government to end the Mormon practice of polygamy forced most into hiding and left little energy to promote spelling reform.

It remained -- and remains -- of interest to Mormon historians and to Mormons in general. Mormons tend to have an intense interest in their history, and the presence of this attempt to reform English is often looked upon by a visionary attempt by Brigham Young to promote the common good. There are at least two modern implementations of the Deseret Alphabet, and a children's activity book published in honor of Utah's centennial includes a number of puzzles based on it. It is still (rarely) taught in courses about LDS history.

Meanwhile, the four books published in the Deseret Alphabet are now collectors items, with a good copy of the Book of Mormon fetching up to US$2500.

Deseret Alphabet consists of 76 letters, 38 upper-case and 38 lower-case. The forms of the letters are the same for upper- and lower-case; only the size is different.

The alphabet is divided into four groups of letters: "Long vowels," "Short vowels," "Double sounds," and "Consonants." Most of the consonants are grouped together in voiced/unvoiced pairs.

Current use is exceedingly slight: There are no groups or organizations devoted to its promotion. No books, magazines, or newspapers are currently being published using it, and few people indeed could even read extended texts written in it. One existing implementation has only sold about 100 copies.

Structurally, the Deseret Alphabet is a simple set of alphabetic elements. Although in theory, it provides a simple phonetic system for writing English, it is a bit spotty and inconsistent, particularly in its handling of dipthongs. Composition is not used; no letters are accented. The alphabet uses standard Latin punctuation and followed English capitalization rules.

It should be noted that this is not a reworking of the Latin alphabet. The few instances where there is a relationship between the shape/sound pairing of Latin seem to be more coincidence than not; most of the shapes for the letters seem to have no relationship at all with Latin letters. Letters have been added mostly to regularize the representation of vowels and to add letters for common consonants (ch, th) which are lacking in standard English orthography.

The names of the letters are based on English phonology. The names as written here are different from the names as written in standard presentations of the alphabet; this is done to make the pronunciation of the names clearer.

The alphabet went through two main recensions. The original version differed in the shapes for some of the letters (in particular, the short vowels written smaller than the other letters), but the letters had the same order and names.

There were plans at one point to add two letters (for the sounds "ai" in "hair" and "ew" in "few"), but these never came to fruition. One author records seeing a forty-letter version when visiting Salt Lake City in 1855. The additional letters ("oi" and "yu") are not included in this proposal because there is no evidence of their actual use, and the shapes they are said to have are simple ligatures of "SHORT AH+SHORT I" and "SHORT I+LONG OO". Otherwise the thirty-eight letter set was constant.

The order was also constant, except for the first two primers, which reversed YEE and WU. Both earlier and later material, however, use the same order for these letters, and so the order presented here can be taken as the standard.

There is no evidence regarding collation of the Deseret Alphabet. One assumes that the letters are intended to collate in the order in which they were commonly presented, but there is no proof of that at this time.

There are number of examples of the Deseret alphabet on the internet. Try

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/deseret.htm