ortografiei

Ortografia, or orthography, is the conventional system for writing a language, including the set of letters, diacritics, punctuation, capitalization, and the rules that govern their use. The term derives from Greek orthos "correct" and graphia "writing." An orthography provides a standard way to represent speech in written form, helps readers distinguish words that would otherwise look alike, and supports literacy and communication.

Orthographies can be phonemic, aiming to reflect current pronunciation, or etymological, preserving historical spellings and foreign influences. They include decisions about which letters and diacritics to use, how to indicate vowel quality or stress, rules for hyphenation and word breaks, and conventions for punctuation and capitalization.

Most languages have regulatory bodies or language academies that publish official norms and periodically revise spelling conventions. Reforms may simplify spellings, regularize correspondences between letters and sounds, or adapt to new borrowings and technologies. Debates between prescriptivist and descriptivist perspectives are common during such reforms.

Examples highlight diversity. Romanian orthography uses diacritics such as ă, â, î, ș, and ț to represent specific phonemes. English orthography features many irregularities due to history and loanwords. In the digital age, Unicode and input methods influence orthographic choices and accessibility, while encoding standards help preserve consistent spelling across platforms.

Orthography is interconnected with phonology and morphology, guiding how a language is represented in writing while reflecting its sound system, historical development, and social conventions.