Editing Egyptian hieroglyphs (section)

==Spelling==
Standard [[orthography]]—"correct" spelling—in Egyptian is much looser than in modern languages. In fact, one or several variants exist for almost every word. One finds:

*Redundancies;
*Omission of [[graphemes]], which are ignored whether or not they are intentional;
*Substitutions of one grapheme for another, such that it is impossible to distinguish a "mistake" from an "alternate spelling";
*Errors of omission in the drawing of signs, which are much more problematic when the writing is cursive (hieratic) writing, but especially demotic, where the schematization of the signs is extreme.

However, many of these apparent spelling errors constitute an issue of chronology. Spelling and standards varied over time, so the writing of a word during the [[Old Kingdom of Egypt|Old Kingdom]] might be considerably different during the [[New Kingdom of Egypt|New Kingdom]]. Furthermore, the Egyptians were perfectly content to include older orthography ("historical spelling") alongside newer practices, as though it were acceptable in English to use archaic spellings in modern texts. Most often, ancient "spelling errors" are simply misinterpretations of context.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}} Today, hieroglyphists use numerous cataloguing systems (notably the ''[[Manuel de Codage]]'' and ''[[Gardiner's Sign List]]'') to clarify the presence of determinatives, ideograms, and other ambiguous signs in transliteration.