they give a morphologically rigorous representation of a word family;
they are a ‘machine’ for word construction;
they provide a structural basis for real reading of single words.
Read a matrix from left to right.
Make single, complete words from a matrix.
Use only one element from a single column at a time.
You don’t have to take an element from every column of a matrix, but columns may not be ‘leapfrogged’.
Watch the joins! You must be on the lookout for spelling patterns when you construct a word from a matrix.