orthography

Orthography is the conventional system for writing a language, including its letters or characters, diacritics, punctuation, and capitalization. It specifies how spoken language is represented in written form and defines the rules for spelling, hyphenation, punctuation, and the use of capitals. Orthography interacts with phonology and morphology but operates as a codified standard for written language rather than a description of speech or grammar.

Orthographic systems vary widely across languages and scripts. In alphabetic writing, letters typically encode sounds but with varying degrees of regularity; English, for example, has a deep and irregular spelling system, while Spanish or Italian are comparatively shallow. Some languages use syllabaries or logographic scripts, each with its own conventions for representing words and syllables. Diacritics, accents, and tone marks may signal pronunciation, stress, or grammatical distinctions. In many languages, orthography also governs the use of punctuation, capitalization, and numerical representations.

Historical development of orthography is gradual and often politically or culturally influenced. Orthographic reforms aim to simplify, regularize, or standardize writing conventions, and they can affect education, publishing, and literacy. Notable examples include the 20th-century Turkish shift to a Latin alphabet, various German spelling reforms, and changes to Chinese characters through promotion of simplified forms alongside traditional variants. Other languages continually negotiate loanwords and evolving usage within established norms.

In modern use, orthography underpins literacy teaching, editorial standards, typography, and digital text processing. It interacts with technology through keyboards, fonts, encoding systems, and natural language processing, shaping how languages are taught, printed, and used in communication across communities.