Orthography

An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language. It includes norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.

Most significant languages in the modern era are written down, and for most such languages a standard orthography has been developed, often based on a standard variety of the language, and thus exhibiting less dialect variation than the spoken language. Sometimes there may be variation in a language's orthography, as between American and British spelling in the case of English orthography. In some languages orthography is regulated by language academies, although for many languages (including English) there are no such authorities, and orthography develops in a more organic way. Even in the latter languages, a significant amount of consensus arises naturally, although a maximum of consistency or standardization occurs only when prescriptively imposed according to style guides.

The English word orthography dates from the 15th century. It comes from the French orthographie, from Latin orthographia, which derives from Greek ὀρθός orthós, "correct", and γράφειν gráphein, "to write".

Orthography is largely concerned with matters of spelling, and in particular the relationship between phonemes and graphemes in a language. Other elements that may be considered part of orthography include hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Orthography thus describes or defines the set of symbols used in writing a language, and the rules about how to use those symbols.

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