Spelling is the writing of a word or words with all necessary letters and diacritics present in the correct order. It is one of the elements of orthography.

Approved spelling is one of the features of a standard language, and official languages usually have a standard spelling. Minority languages and regional languages sometimes lack a unified spelling, a characteristic which was shared by many national languages until recently.

Divergence from the standard spelling is often perceived as illiteracy, lower class, or even mental handicap , and can detract from the validity of the arguments so presented. Since traditional language teaching methods emphasized written language over spoken language, a second-language speaker can have a better spelling than a native in spite of having a poorer command of the language.

Different spelling standards can lead to the perception of the variants as different languages (see "American language"). Conversely a common spelling over different accents helps to perceive the variants as one common language (see "Chinese language")

See also

• Misspelling
• Spelling reform
  • Reforms of French orthography
  • German spelling reform of 1996
  • Reforms of Russian orthography
  • Shavian alphabet
• Phonemic orthography
• Spelling pronunciation
• English spelling
  • List of English words with diacritics
• Greek orthography
  • Monotonic orthography
  • Polytonic orthography
• Latin spelling and pronunciation
• Russian orthography
• Grapheme
• Official script