Definition:
(1) The practice or study of correct spelling according to established usage. (2) The study of letters and how they are used to express sounds and form words. Adjective: orthographic. See also:
Etymology:
From the Greek, "correct writing"Observations:
- "Orthography: The science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear."
(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary) - "In linguistics, . . . the name for the study of the writing system is graphology, a level of language parallel to phonology. The earlier, prescriptive sense of the term [orthography] continues to be used, but the later, more neutral sense is common among scholars of language."
(Tom McArthur, The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford Univ. Press, 1992) - "Even in orthography, the area that is often said to have become completely standardized by 1800, we find a remarkable amount of variation, as Sidney Greenbaum established in 1986. He carried out a survey to estimate how much spelling variation there was in Modern English. . . . He found an average of three variant forms per page [of a dictionary]--296 entries. . . . As a percentage of all the entries in the dictionary, this was a remarkable 5.6 per cent."
(David Crystal, The Stories of English. Overlook Press, 2004) - "Like such ideological forefathers as George Bernard Shaw, Theodore Roosevelt and Andrew Carnegie, [Edward Rondthaler] wants to clear up the whims of spelling by adopting a more phonetic version of English, one where words are written as they sound and pronounced as they are written. . . .
"'The kee to ending English iliterasy is to adopt a speling that's riten as it sounds,' he writes in his fashion. 'It need not be to diferent frum whut we alredy hav.'"
(Joseph Berger, "Struggling to Put the 'Ortho' Back in Orthography." The New York Times, April 23, 1994)
Pronunciation: or-THOG-rah-fee
