indicate the pronunciation of words, but most American dictionaries for native English-speakers, e.g., American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, avoid phonetic transcription and instead employ respelling systems based on the English alphabet, with diacritical marks over the vowels and stress marks. (See Pronunciation respelling for English for a generic version.) Another commonly encountered alphabetic tradition was originally created by American linguists for the transcription of Native American and European languages and is still commonly used by linguists of Slavic, Indic, Semitic, Uralic (here known as the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet) and Caucasian languages. This is often labeled the Americanist phonetic alphabet despite having been widely used for languages outside the Americas. The principal difference between these alphabets and the IPA is that the specially created characters of the IPA are abandoned in favour of already existing typewriter characters with diacritics (e.g. many characters are borrowed from Eastern European orthographies) or digraphs. Examples of this transcription may be seen in Pike's Phonemics and in many of the papers reprinted in Joos's Readings in Linguistics 1. In the days before it was possible to create phonetic fonts for computer printers and computerized typesetting, this system allowed material to be typed on existing typewriters to create printable material. There are also extended versions of the IPA, for example: Ext-IPA, VoQS, and Luciano Canepari's canIPA. Aspects of alphabetic transcription The International Phonetic Association recommends that a phonetic transcription should be enclosed in square brackets "[ ]". A transcription that specifically denotes only phonemic contrasts may be enclosed in slashes "/ /" instead. If one is unsure, it is best to use brackets since by setting off a transcription with slashes, one makes a theoretical claim that every symbol phonemically contrasts for the language being transcribed. For phonetic transcriptions, there is flexibility in how closely sounds may be transcribed. A transcription that gives only a basic idea of the sounds of a language in the broadest terms is called a broad transcription; in some cases, it may be equivalent to a phonemic transcription (only without any theoretical claims). A close transcription, indicating precise details of the sounds, is called a narrow transcription. They are not binary choices but the ends of a continuum, with many possibilities in between. All are enclosed in brackets. For example, in some dialects the English word pretzel in