The eagerly awaited revision of the Association's Principles will no doubt incorporate a less controversial statement than the present (paragraph 11) remark that THEpositions ofTHEtongue in the articulation of cardinal [i, a, α] and [u] have been determined. The old form of diagram introduced by Daniel Jones, and still surviving as the only official IPA shape must surely be now discarded. Its form implied excessive optimism both about the universality of the applicability of the X-ray photography data on which it was based, and about its practical usefulness. It can only be said to have flourished for about the decade 1919–29. Since the early ‘thirties it has been overwhelmingly rejected in favour of Jones's second choice, which many would perhaps be surprised to hear has as yet absolutely no explicit official IPA sanction. This seems to have first appeared in 1929 in Ida Ward's The Phonetics of English. Jones himself never made use of the present official IPA diagram in any new or fully re-written book after 1932 not even in The Phoneme. So far as one knows he never formally abandoned it but his discarding of it seems to leave little doubt that he himself would have been in sympathy with authorization in the new edition of the de facto current version. If anyone still considers the older version preferable it would be very interesting to hear their arguments and to hear of any evidence on the basis of which such an opinion were held. Now is clearly the time for speaking up on this topic.