Editing Spelling (section)

{{Short description|Set of conventions to represent words in writing}}
{{Other uses}}
{{Reading}}
{{IPA notice}}
'''Spelling''' is a set of conventions for [[written language]] regarding how [[grapheme]]s should correspond to the sounds of [[spoken language]].<ref>Coulmas, F. (1996), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems, Oxford:Blackwell</ref> Spelling is one of the elements of [[orthography]], and highly standardized spelling is a [[prescriptive]] element.

Spellings originated as [[transcription (linguistics)|transcription]]s of the sounds of [[speech]] according to the [[alphabetic principle]]. Fully [[phonemic orthography]] is usually only approximated, due to factors including changes in pronunciation over time, and the borrowing of vocabulary from other languages without adapting its spelling. [[Homophone]]s may be spelled differently on purpose in order to disambiguate words that would otherwise have identical spellings.