orthographique

Orthographique is an adjective used to describe anything related to orthography, the conventional writing system of a language. Orthography encompasses the set of conventions for spelling, diacritics, hyphenation, capitalization, punctuation, and the representation of sounds in written form. The term is commonly used in French and is the source of the English adjective orthographic; both share the same underlying concept.

Orthography is distinct from phonology and grammar; it concerns how a language is written rather than how it is spoken or its syntactic rules. In many languages, orthographic systems are standardized by dictionaries, academies, or regulatory bodies and can undergo reforms to simplify or regularize spellings. Such changes aim to improve consistency, teachability, or modernization of the written language.

Examples of orthographic features include French accents such as the acute, grave, and circumflex marks, the diaeresis, the cedilla, and the use of ligatures; English orthography displays a deep, largely historical correspondence between letters and sounds and features many irregular spellings. Other languages, such as Spanish or Portuguese, use diacritics and digraphs as integral parts of their orthography.

Applications of orthographic conventions arise in education, publishing, and computer text processing, where stable spelling systems underpin literacy and communication. Digital tools rely on orthographic rules for spell checking, text normalization, and optical character recognition, and researchers study historical orthographic changes to understand language evolution.

See also: orthography, spelling, diacritics, orthographic reform, language standardization.