Greek orthography

Writing system of Modern Greek
The orthography of the Greek language ultimately has its roots in the adoption of the Greek alphabet in the 9th century BC. Some time prior to that, one early form of Greek, Mycenaean, was written in Linear B, although there was a lapse of several centuries (the Greek Dark Ages) between the time Mycenaean stopped being written and the time when the Greek alphabet came into use. Early Greek writing in the Greek alphabet was phonemic, different in each dialect. Since the adoption of the Ionic variant for Attic in 403 BC, however, Greek orthography has been largely conservative and historical. Given the phonetic development of Greek, especially in the Hellenistic period, certain modern vowel phonemes have multiple orthographic realizations:
can be spelled η, ι, υ, ει, οι, or υι (see Iotacism);
can be spelled either ε or αι;
can be spelled either ο or ω. This affects not only lexical items but also inflectional affixes, so correct orthography requires mastery of formal grammar, e. g. η καλή 'the good one (fem. sing.)' vs. οι καλοί 'the good ones (masc. pl. )'; καλώ 'I call' vs. καλό 'good (neut. sing.)'. Similarly, the orthography preserves ancient doubled consonants, though these are now pronounced the same as single consonants, except in Cypriot Greek.

A digraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters in sequence. The orthography of Greek includes several digraphs, including various pairs of vowel letters that used to be pronounced as diphthongs but have been shortened to monophthongs in pronunciation. Many of these are characteristic developments of modern Greek, but some were already present in Classical Greek. None of them is regarded as a letter of the alphabet. During the Byzantine period, it became customary to write the silent iota in digraphs as an iota subscript. Letters AncientGreek ModernGreekTranscriptionPronunciationTranscriptionPronunciationαι, αιaieαι, ᾳāiaει, ειeiiηι, ῃēiοι, οιoiυι, υιuiωι, ῳōioαυ, αυauav, af before vowel or voiced consonant; otherwiseᾱυ, ᾱυāuευ, ευeuev, ef before vowel or voiced consonant; otherwiseηυ, ηυēuiv, if before vowel or voiced consonant; otherwiseου, ουouearlier uωυ, ωυōüoiγγ, γγŋgng / nj, g / j, ngh / njh and [ɲɟ] in formal registers, but often reduced to and [ɟ] in informal speech;also pronounced and [ɲʝ] in some words (e. g. εγγενής, έγγραφο, συγγραφέας)γκ, γκŋkg / y, ng / ny word initially and in some loanwords; otherwise,often reduced to in informal speechγξ, γξŋxnxγχ, γχŋkhnkh / nç and [ɲç]μπ, μπmpb, mb, mp word initially and in some loanwords; otherwise,often reduced to in informal speechντ, ντntd, nd word initially and in some loanwords; otherwise,often reduced to in informal speechΤΖ, τζ[absent]tz

Following the advent of printing, most Greek punctuation was gradually standardized with French: the hypodiastole was fully unified with the comma, the comma serves as the decimal point (and in this use is called the hypodiastole) and it also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι (ó,ti, "whatever") from ότι (óti, "that"). One of the few places where ano teleia exists is on the Microsoft Windows Polytonic Greek keyboard (having the driver name KBDHEPT. DLL). The exclamation mark (θαυμαστικό thavmastikó) is mostly used as in English. The hyphen, the brackets, the colon, the ellipsis and the slash are also in use. The slash has the additional function of forming common abbreviations like α/φοί for αδελφοί 'brothers'. The ligature kai (ϗ) is sometimes used for the same function as the English ampersand.

There are special rules for how to write Greek numerals. In modern Greek, a number of changes have been made. Instead of extending an overline over an entire number (like ), a keraia (κεραία, lit. "hornlike projection") is placed to its upper right, a development of the short marks formerly used for single numbers and fractions. The modern keraia is a symbol (ʹ) similar to the acute accent (´), but has its own Unicode character, encoded as U+0374. Alexander the Great's father Philip II of Macedon is thus known as Φίλιππος Βʹ in modern Greek. A lower left keraia (Unicode: U+0375, "Greek Lower Numeral Sign") is now standard for identifying thousands: 2015 is represented as ͵ΒΙΕʹ (2000 + 10 + 5).