Orthographical

Orthographical, or orthographic, is an adjective relating to orthography, the conventional spelling system of a language. Orthography encompasses the rules and conventions used to represent language in written form, including the choice of letters and digraphs, the use of diacritics, capitalization, hyphenation, and punctuation. It also concerns the correspondence between written symbols (graphemes) and spoken sounds (phonemes) and how this mapping may vary across dialects and historical periods.

In linguistics, orthography may be described as shallow or deep, depending on how closely spelling mirrors pronunciation. A shallow orthography has a relatively transparent grapheme-phoneme correspondence, while a deep orthography can preserve historical forms or complex sound changes. Orthographic systems are historically contingent and are shaped by community practice, education, and institutional standardization, sometimes formalized by language academies or national authorities.

Orthography changes through reform movements, standardization efforts, or script reforms. Such changes affect literacy, education, dictionaries, digital text processing, and searchability. In multilingual and digraphic contexts, orthographic decisions influence accessibility and technology support, including encoding, input methods, and spell-checking.

The term is used across disciplines—linguistics, language planning, education, and typography—to discuss how writing systems represent language. Orthographical considerations are central when documenting languages, creating educational materials, or debating spelling reforms.