Orthography
The
orthography of a language is the set of symbols (
glyphs and
diacritics) used to write a language, as well as the set of rules describing how to write these glyphs correctly, including
spelling,
punctuation, and capitalization. The term is derived from
Greek ορθο ortho- ("correct") and
γραφος graphos ("that writes"). Orthography is distinct from
typography.
Orthography includes the
writing system of a language. English, for example, has an
alphabet of 26 letters for both
consonants and
vowels, but no glyph for
stress. However, each English letter may represent more than one sound, and each English sound (
phoneme) may be written by more than one letter. An example of an orthographic rule describing how letters are used is
i before e except after c; another is that the
plural is written with the letter
s regardless of whether it is pronounced as an [s], as in
cats, or as a [z], as in
dogs. In addition, combinations of letters called
digraphs, such as
th, represent single sounds in English orthography. Other languages which use the same alphabet as English may not use the same digraphs.
One of the most complex orthographies is that of
Japanese, which uses a combination of several thousand logographic glyphs (Chinese characters
Hanzi) called
kanji, two
syllabaries called
katakana and
hiragana, and the Latin alphabet,
rōmaji. All words in Japanese can be written in either katakana, hiragana, or rōmaji. Most words also have a kanji form. The choice of which type of writing to use depends on a number of factors, including standard conventions, readability, and stylistic choices.
An orthography may be described as 'efficient' if it has one glyph per speech sound (phoneme) and
vice versa, but few systems are perfect.
An orthography that does not represent all the sounds of a language, such as that of
Italian or
Arabic, is called '
defective'. Both inefficient and defective orthographies may motivate
spelling reform.
* Writing systems:
**
Logogram**
Syllabary**
Alphabet***
Abjad***
Abugida* Writing rules and components:
**
Spelling**
Punctuation**
Collation**
Letter case and
capitalization***
Majuscule***
Minuscule**
Diacritic**
Stroke order**
Eight Principles of Yong**
Radical (Chinese character)*
Spelling*
Prescription and description*
Penmanship*
Cursive*
Calligraphy*
Graphology*
Writing*
List of writing systems*
phonemic awareness*
Free Spell Checker for multiple languages*Smalley, W.A. (ed.) 1964.
Orthography studies: articles on new writing systems (United Bible Society, London).
