neolography

Neolography is the practice or study of the creation of new graphemes—letterforms or symbols used in writing—to represent sounds, morphemes, or linguistic distinctions that are not efficiently captured by existing scripts.

It encompasses the design of new letters, diacritics, ligatures, or entirely novel scripts, and can apply to natural languages, minority languages, or constructed languages. Neographs may be proposed for phonetic representation, for morphological distinction, or for aesthetic purposes in typography.

Historically, new graphemes have appeared with the expansion of literacy, linguistic research, and printing technology. Examples include the introduction of diacritics in European alphabets, or the creation of letters like thorn and eth in Old English, or the emergence of ligatures in Renaissance typography; in modern times, some scholars document proposed neographs for endangered languages or for phonemic transcription.

In contemporary use, neolography often arises in orthographic reform, language documentation, or digital typography. The adoption of a neograph depends on linguistic utility, typographic practicality, and community acceptance, and may require encoding in standards like Unicode.

Criticism tends to focus on readability, learnability, and standardization. Critics argue that excessive invention of symbols can hinder communication; proponents contend that it enables precise representation of phonology or morphology and supports minority language rights. See also related concepts such as orthography, grapheme, diacritic, ligature, constructed language, and typography.