orthographic

Orthographic is an adjective relating to orthography, the conventional spelling system of a language. It describes the rules, conventions, and written forms used to represent words in writing, as well as the study and description of those conventions. The term covers letters, diacritics, punctuation, capitalization, and the relationships between written form and meaning.

Orthography varies between languages and over time. Some languages have shallow orthographies, in which spelling closely matches pronunciation (such as Spanish or Finnish), while others have deep or opaque orthographies (notably English), in which historical shifts and irregularities persist in the written form. Orthographic standardization is pursued through grammars, dictionaries, education, and language policy.

Orthographic reform refers to deliberate changes to a language’s spelling system. Notable examples include the German orthography reform of the late 20th century, the Turkish alphabet reform of 1928, and the Russian spelling reform of 1918. Reforms aim to improve literacy, consistency, and adaptation to new technologies, though they can provoke debate and resistance.

Besides language spelling, orthographic also appears in geometry and technical drawing as orthographic projection, a method for representing three‑dimensional objects in two dimensions by projecting onto a plane with parallel lines. The term in this sense is distinct from orthography but shares the same Greek roots meaning “correct writing” or “corrected view.”

Digital and typographic contexts add considerations for orthography, including character encodings, input methods, and spell-checking. Modern systems rely on Unicode to encode letters with diacritics and other marks, supporting multilingual orthographies within a single interface.