Editing Czech language (section)

==Orthography==
[[File:Psací písmo.gif|thumb|right|upright=1.35|The handwritten Czech alphabet, without a Q, W and X]]
{{main|Czech orthography}}
{{see also|Czech Braille}}
Czech has one of the most [[Phonemic orthography|phonemic orthographies]] of all European languages. Its alphabet contains 42 [[grapheme]]s, most of which correspond to individual [[phoneme]]s,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Neustupný |first1=J.V. |last2=Nekvápil |first2=Jiří |author1-link=Language Management in the Czech Republic |editor1-last=Kaplan |editor1-first=Robert B. |editor2-last=Baldauf |editor2-first=Richard B. Jr. |title=Language Planning and Policy in Europe |pages=78–79}}</ref> and only contains only one [[digraph (orthography)|digraph]]: ''ch'', which follows ''h'' in the alphabet.<ref>{{Harvnb|Pansofia|1993|p=11}}</ref> The characters ''q'', ''w'' and ''x'' appear only in foreign words.<ref name="Harkins 1952 1">{{Harvnb|Harkins|1952|p=1}}</ref> The [[háček]] (ˇ) is used with certain letters to form new characters: ''[[š]]'', ''[[ž]]'', and ''[[č]]'', as well as ''[[ň]]'', ''[[ě]]'', ''[[ř]]'', ''[[ť]]'', and ''[[ď]]'' (the latter five uncommon outside Czech). The last two letters are sometimes written with a comma above (ʼ, an abbreviated háček) because of their height.<ref>{{Harvnb|Harkins|1952|pp=6–8}}</ref> Czech orthography has influenced the orthographies of other Balto-Slavic languages and some of its characters have been adopted for [[transliteration of Cyrillic]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Berger |first1=Tilman |editor1-last=Baddeley |editor1-first=Susan |editor2-last=Voeste |editor2-first=Anja |title=Orthographies in Early Modern Europe |page=255 |chapter=Religion and diacritics: The case of Czech orthography}}</ref>

Czech orthography reflects [[vowel length]]; long vowels are indicated by an [[acute accent]] or, in the case of the character ''ů'', a [[ring (diacritic)|ring]]. Long ''u'' is usually written ''ú'' at the beginning of a word or morpheme (''úroda'', ''neúrodný'') and ''ů'' elsewhere,<ref>{{Harvnb|Harkins|1952|p=7}}</ref> except for loanwords (''skútr'') or onomatopoeia (''bú'').<ref>{{Harvnb|Pansofia|1993|p=26}}</ref> Long vowels and ''ě'' are not considered separate letters in the alphabetical order.<ref>{{Harvnb|Hajičová|1986|p=31}}</ref> The character ''ó'' exists only in loanwords and [[onomatopoeia]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Harkins|1952|p=8}}</ref>

Czech [[typography|typographical]] features not associated with phonetics generally resemble those of most European languages that use the [[Latin script]], including English. [[Proper noun]]s, [[honorific]]s, and the first letters of quotations are [[capitalization|capitalized]], and [[punctuation]] is typical of other Latin European languages. Ordinal numbers (1st) use a point, as in German (1.). The Czech language uses a decimal comma instead of a decimal point. When writing a long number, spaces between every three digits, including those in decimal places, may be used for better orientation in handwritten texts. The number 1,234,567.89101 may be written as 1234567,89101 or 1 234 567,891 01.<ref>[http://prirucka.ujc.cas.cz/?id=791#nadpis1 Členění čísel], Internetová jazyková příručka, ÚJČ AVČR</ref> In [[proper noun]] phrases (except personal and settlement names), only the first word and proper nouns inside such phrases are capitalized (''Pražský hrad'', [[Prague Castle]]).<ref>{{Harvnb|Naughton|2005|p=11}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Pansofia|1993|p=34}}</ref>