Orthography

“Orthography” is, at present, one of the most elusive terms among all of the words available in the terminological inventory of the linguistics of writing. This chapter identifies two different uses of the term “orthography”: a polysemous use (for “writing system” and “spelling”; in historical linguistics, also “a branch of empirical knowledge”), and a prescriptive use (as a set of rules widely accepted by a community of writers and readers).