ortográfica

Orthography, or ortografía in Spanish and ortografia in Portuguese, is the set of conventions that govern the written form of a language. It specifies the correct spelling of words and the representation of sounds, morphemes, and punctuation in writing. Orthography also covers the use of diacritics, capitalization, hyphenation, word breaks, and the treatment of loanwords and proper names. It serves as the standard framework for literacy and communication.

Orthographic rules are established by linguistic authorities and may be prescriptive, describing ideal usage, or descriptive, documenting how language is actually written. They can be revised through formal reforms to reflect pronunciation changes, technological needs, or regional varieties. Reforms aim to improve consistency, reduce ambiguity, and facilitate mutual intelligibility among speakers of different regions or dialects.

Different languages employ different orthographic systems. Diacritics such as accents, tilde, or cedilla indicate stress, vowel quality, or phonemic distinctions. For example, Portuguese uses diacritics like ã, õ, ç, and ê; Spanish uses accents and the letter ñ. English orthography relies less on diacritics and presents more irregular spellings, while capitalization and punctuation follow conventional rules. Orthography is distinct from pronunciation and grammar, though it interacts with all three in practice.

In education and publishing, orthography provides the normative basis for spelling curricula, dictionaries, typography, and digital input. Software tools increasingly implement orthographic rules through spell checkers and grammar checkers, while multilingual communication often relies on standardized orthographies to ensure clarity across varieties of a language.