In an attempt to resolve the controversy about the nature of our spelling system, researchers conducted a study of American English orthography which reaffirmed the case for teaching spelling on the basis of patterns of sound-to-letter correspondences. The controversy involved the Paul Hanna-James Moore study and Ernest Horn's critique of their study. Hanna and Moore found a closer relationship between the sounds of spoken English and their representation in writing than is usually supposed, and Ernest Horn cast doubt on the interpretation of data in the Hanna-Moore study and elaborated weaknesses in the case for regularity in orthography. Subsequently, Hanna with E. Hugh Rudorf and Richard E. Hodges conducted research to determine how consistently the phonemes of American English were represented by particular written symbols in a sample of 17,310 selected words. A consistent pronunciation system and a carefully prepared list of letter representations were used to test this relationship. Results supported the contention that productive relationships exist between the American-English writing system and the sounds of words and suggested that the teaching of spelling might be facilitated by conscientious programming of spelling materials, capitalizing on consistent sound-to-spelling correspondences and "spelling rules." (JS)