You can use "@" for schwa

[George Douglas Allen]

I noticed in the recent messages about unstressed initial syllables that
writers had to invent a way to talk about schwa. About 20 years ago, back
when ChILDES was still text-based, I created a lower-128 ASCII system for
representing English phoneme strings. That so-called PHONASCII system (which
I wrote up for the Journal of Phonetics) has been largely supplanted by the
more flexible fonts available on current PCs, but there is still a use for
some of the symbols, especially for those of use who stick to text-based
e-mail. Particularly useful is "@" for schwa, since it even looks a little
like the target symbol.

George D. Allen, Ph.D. <alleng at msu.edu>
Michigan State University
A217 Life Sciences, E. Lansing, MI 48824
Voice: 517.353.5976; Fax 517.353.9553