The Alphabetic Principle: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?
If you’ve ever heard terms like phonemic awareness, decoding, or spelling development and wondered how they all fit together, you’re not alone. These concepts can feel technical—but they are actually at the heart of how children learn to read.
This post is grounded in research from my scholarly paper, Structured Literacy in Practice (Reams, 2025), and is designed to translate that research into practical understanding for teachers and families. My goal is to help you clearly understand one of the most essential foundations of reading success: the alphabetic principle.
At its core, the alphabetic principle is the understanding that letters represent sounds, and that those sounds can be blended together to read words and mapped back onto letters to spell words. This understanding does not develop automatically—it must be taught explicitly, systematically, and reinforced through meaningful practice.
When students develop a strong grasp of the alphabetic principle, they are better equipped to:
Decode unfamiliar words when reading
Spell words more accurately when writing
Build fluency over time
Gain confidence as readers
The key components that support the alphabetic principle—phonemic awareness, decoding, and encoding—are explained here and why each one plays a critical role in helping students become successful readers.
Alphabetic Principle
A cornerstone of the alphabetic principle is the connection between the visual symbols of letters (i.e., graphemes) to their corresponding speech sounds (i.e., phonemes). The alphabetic principle is the understanding that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken words, connecting phonemes (Ehri, 2020). Thus the alphabetic principle requires 1) the understanding that spoken words are divided into individual sounds (i.e., phoneme awareness), 2) the understanding that words are made up of letters and those letters represent the individual sounds of speech, and 3) the ability to translate the letters in printed words to the sounds they make so readers can read and pronounce, or decode, words accurately (Baker et al., 2018). This can be extended to translating the sounds they hear to letters as they spell, or encode, words accurately. Ultimately, students need to understand that the visual symbols represent the sounds of the letters and that the written word represents the spoken word as they build an understanding of the systematic and predictable relationships between graphemes and phonemes (Gehsmann & Mesmer, 2023). To read fluently and successfully decode words, students must develop the alphabetic principle (Gehsmann & Mesmer, 2023; Baker et al., 2018).
Phonemic Awareness. Phonemic awareness is a foundational reading skill and helps students learn the alphabetic principle or grapheme-phoneme correspondence. Phonemic awareness is the awareness that words are made up of individual sound parts (Brady, 2020). This awareness shifts from an understanding of larger units of sound like syllables (e.g., ro-bot, and el-e-phant) to smaller units of sound such as onsets (i.e., beginning sounds) that start a syllable like /b/ in bag and /s/ in sack and individual phonemes (i.e., individual sounds) like /b/ /a/ /g/ in bag and /s/ /a/ /k/ in sack (Brady, 2020). According to Gillon and McNeil (2009), phonemic awareness is a “powerful predictor of early reading development” (p. 72) and deficits in this area can lead to persistent reading issues (Gillon & McNeil, 2009). Children who have successfully mastered phonemic awareness can manipulate the phonemes to segment individual sounds in words and blend those sounds to form the word (Kilpatrick, 2015).
Decoding. Decoding is a strategy readers use to read unfamiliar words. It involves transforming graphemes into phonemes that are blended together to make a whole word and then searching the lexicon, or word memory, for familiar spoken words that match the blended word (Ehri, 2017). In other words, readers sound out words from left to right using their knowledge of letter sounds and then blend those sounds together to form recognizable words. As readers successfully decode words, these words begin to develop the reader’s mental lexicon where they store words they know by “sight” or automatically without the need to decode (Ehri, 2017).
Encoding. Encoding refers to the ability to translate sounds into written symbols and letters. It is a crucial component of reading instruction and literacy development (McNeil et al., 2023; Graham & Harris, 2000). It involves understanding the phonemic structure of words and being able to represent those sounds with corresponding letters or letter combinations. Additionally, strong encoding skills contribute to spelling proficiency. Spelling from the earliest phases of literacy instruction “plays a key role in facilitating children’s ability to systematically use phonological information in their reading attempts” (McNeil et al., 2023.p. 993). The results of McNeil et al.’s (2023) study show: 1) the importance of providing explicit instruction in encoding from the beginning of literacy instruction, and 2) that developing encoding skills helps the development of decoding skills (McNeil et al., 2023). Overall, encoding plays a vital role in reading instruction by providing the foundational skills necessary for decoding and early literacy skills.
Conclusion
The alphabetic principle is not simply one component of reading instruction; it is the foundation upon which successful reading is built. When students understand that spoken words are made of individual sounds, that those sounds are represented by letters, and that they can use this knowledge to both read and spell words, they gain meaningful access to the reading process. Phonemic awareness, decoding, and encoding function as an interconnected system, and weakness in any one of these areas can significantly hinder literacy development, while strong instruction across all three accelerates growth. This is why explicit, systematic instruction is especially critical for students who struggle with reading or have dyslexia. For teachers, this means prioritizing intentional instruction in sound–symbol relationships and providing frequent opportunities for guided practice; for parents, it means understanding that reading development requires more than exposure to books—it requires structured teaching and reinforcement. When the alphabetic principle is firmly established, students are better equipped to read accurately, build fluency, strengthen comprehension, and develop the confidence necessary for long-term literacy success.
