Abstract
Catalan spelling is a result of corpus planning carried out at the beginning of the 20th century in an atmosphere of political and linguistic vindication. This chapter first presents the criteria used for language codification and builds a framework for the analysis of alphabetic orthographies, including the different kinds of spellings used in them and the difficulties of reading and writing related to orthographic opacity and complexity. The chapter then goes on to discuss the spelling conventions of Catalan, taking into account possible coincidences with neighbouring languages, and classify them as morphological, diasystemic, historical, or etymological. Finally, the orthographic choices made for Catalan are interpreted with reference to codification criteria and language representations, and, in conclusion, it is observed that the corpus language planning activities were successful in achieving the aim of producing an orthography comparable to those of languages with a full range of uses characteristic of a modernized society.