Danish orthography
Danish orthography is the system used to write the Danish language. The oldest preserved examples of written Danish are in the Runic alphabet, but by the end of the High Middle Ages the Runes had mostly been replaced by the Latin letters. Danish currently uses a 29-letter Latin-script alphabet, identical to the Norwegian alphabet. In the Danish Alphabet, there is an additional 3 letters, which are: Æ, Å, Ø. Alphabet. The Danish alphabet is based upon the Latin alphabet and has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1980 when W was separated from V. The  letters c, q, w, x and z are not used in the spelling of native words. Therefore, the phonemic interpretation of letters in loanwords depends on the donating language. However, Danish tends to preserve the original spelling of loanwords. In particular, a 'c' that represents is almost never normalized to 's' in Danish, as would most often happen in Norwegian. Many words originally derived from Latin roots retain 'c' in their Danish spelling, for example Norwegian vs Danish . However, the letter 'c' representing is mostly normalized to 'k'. The letter 'q' is used in a few loanwords like (from English ), but "qu" is normally replaced by "kv" in words from Latin (e.g. ) and by "k" in words from French (e.g. ). The letter 'x' is normally replaced by "ks" in words from Latin, Greek, or French, e.g. ; but 'x' is retained: 1) at the beginning of words of Greek origin, where it sounds , e.g. ; 2) before 'c' in words of Latin origin, e.g. ; 3) in chemical terms, e.g. ; 4) in loanwords from English, e.g. ; 5) at the end of French loanwords, where it is silent, e.g. . The verb "exe/ekse", derived from the name of the letter 'x' itself, can be  spelled either way. The letter 'x' is also used instead of "eks-" in abbreviations: , also written . The "foreign" letters also sometimes appear in the spelling of otherwise-indigenous family names. For example, many of the Danish families that use the surname "Skov" (literally: "Woods") spell it "Schou". Also the letter "x" has been restored in some geographical names: "Nexø", "Gladsaxe", "Faxe". Diacritics. Standard Danish orthography has no compulsory diacritics, but allows the use of an acute accent for disambiguation. Most often, an accent on "e" marks a stressed syllable in one of a pair of homographs that have different stresses , for example (a boy) versus (one boy). It can also be part of the official spelling such as in (avenue) or (idea). Less often, any vowel except "å" may be accented to indicate stress on a "word", either to clarify the meaning of the sentence, or to ease the reading otherwise. For example: ("I was standing"), versus ("I got out of bed"); ("the dog does (it)"), versus ("the dog barks"). Most often, however, such distinctions are made using typographical emphasis (italics, underlining) or simply left to the reader to infer from the context, and the use of accents in such  cases may appear dated. A common context in which the explicit acute accent is preferred is to disambiguate ("a", indefinite article) and ("one", numeral) in central places in official written materials such as advertising, where clarity is important. History. There were spelling reforms in 1872, 1889 (with some changes in 1892), and 1948. These spelling reforms were based in the decisions of the Nordic spelling conference of 1869, whose goal was to abolish spellings that are justified by neither phonetics nor etymology and to bring Danish and Swedish orthographies closer. The reform of 1872 replaced the letter "e" by "æ  in some words (Eg">"Æg", "fegte">"fægte", "Hjelm">"Hjælm"; however, for words with "je" the change was reverted in 1889), abolished the distinction of the homophonous words "Thing" and "Ting" (however, the distinction between "thi" and "ti" was retained), replaced the letter "q" by "k" ("Qvinde">"Kvinde"), deleted the silent "e" after vowels ("faae">"faa"), abolished doubling of vowels to signify vowel length ("Steen">"Sten"), replaced "i" by "j" after vowels ("Vei">"Vej"), and introduced some smaller spelling changes. In some cases, spelling of loanwords was simplified, but in general the question of spelling loanwords was largely left undecided. In 1889, the letter "x" was abolished from  native words and most loanwords: "Oxe">"Okse", "Exempel">"Eksempel". The letter "j" was deleted from the combinations "gje, gjæ, gjø, kje, kjæ, kjø": "Kjøkken">"Køkken". Additionally, spelling of loanwords was standardized. In some cases, simplified spellings were adopted ("c" sounded "k" mostly becomes "k"; "ch, ph, rh, th" in words of Greek origin are replaced by "k, f, r, t"), but in many cases original spellings were retained. Danish formerly used both "ø" (in Fraktur) and "ö" (in Antiqua), though it was suggested to use "ø" for IPA /ø/ and "ö" for IPA /œ/, which was also sometimes employed. The distinction between "ø  and ö" was optionally allowed in 1872, recommended in 1889, but rejected in 1892, although the orthographic dictionaries continued to use "ø" and "ö" (collated as if they were the same letter) until 1918 and the book "Folkehöjskolens Sangbog" continued to use "ø" and "ö" in its editions as late as 1962. Earlier instead of "aa" the letter "å" or a ligature of two "a" was also used. In 1948 the letter "å" was re-introduced or officially introduced in Danish, replacing "aa". The letter then came from the Swedish alphabet, where it has been in official use since the  18th century. The initial proposal was to place Å first in the Danish alphabet, before "A". Its place as the last letter of the alphabet, as in Norwegian, was decided in 1955. The former digraph "Aa" still occurs in personal names and in Danish geographical names. However, in geographical names, "Å" is allowed as an alternative spelling: "Aabenraa" or "Åbenrå", "Aalborg" or "Ålborg", "Aarhus" or "Århus". "Aa" remains in use as a transliteration, if the letter is not available for technical reasons. "Aa" is treated like "Å" in alphabetical sorting, not like two adjacent letters "A", meaning that while "a  is the first letter of the alphabet, aa" is the last. All nouns in Danish used to be capitalized, as in German. The reform of 1948 abolished the capitalization of all nouns. The difference between the Dano-Norwegian and the Swedish alphabet is that Swedish uses the variant "Ä" instead of "Æ", and the variant "Ö" instead of "Ø" — similar to German. Also, the collating order for these three letters is different: "Å, Ä, Ö". In current Danish, "W" is recognized as a separate letter from "V". The transition was made in 1980; before that, the "W" was merely considered  to be a variation of the letter "V" and words using it were alphabetized accordingly (e.g.: "Wales, Vallø, Washington, Wedellsborg, Vendsyssel"). The Danish version of the alphabet song still states that the alphabet has 28 letters; the last line reads "otte-og-tyve skal der stå", i.e. "that makes twenty-eight". However, today the letter "w" is considered an official letter. Computing standards. In computing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet: