This paper describes two ways of reducing the normally very complicated speech wave to simple geometrical form without destroying intelligibility, reports the results of articulation tests of the simplified speech, and gives two illustrations of things that can be done more simply with the simplified than with the normal wave. Both methods of simplification involve dichotomization of the amplitude scale and then quantization of the time scale. The first step is achieved by subjecting the speech wave to infinite peak clipping, the second by generating a rectangular wave whose switchings from one amplitude level to the other are related to the switchings of the clipped speech wave by one or the other of two rules. One of the rules yields marginal intelligibility with quanta 0.2 millisecond in length; the other requires slightly shorter quanta. The relative merits of the two methods are accounted for by an elementary application of information theory. Autocorrelation functions, which are especially easy to compute for the simplified waves, are shown.