Italian orthography

Italian orthography (writing) uses a variant of the Latin alphabet consisting of 21 letters to write the Italian language.
Italian orthography is very regular and has an almost one-to-one correspondence between letters or sequences of letters and sounds, that is, it is almost a phonemic orthography. The main exceptions are that stress placement and vowel quality (for and ) are not notated, and may be voiced or not, and may represent vowels or semivowels, and a silent is used in a very few cases.
Alphabet.
The base alphabet consists of 21 letters: five vowels (A, E, I, O, U) and 16 consonants. The letters J, K, W, X and Y are not part of the proper alphabet, and appear only in loanwords (e.g. 'jeans', 'weekend'), foreign names, and in a handful of native words—such as the names "Jesolo", "Bettino Craxi", and "Walter", which all derive from regional languages. In addition, grave, acute and circumflex accents may modify vowel letters.
Double consonants are geminated: "fatto" , "palla" , "bevve" etc.
Vowels.
The Italian alphabet has five vowel letters, . Of those, only represents one sound value, while all others have two. In addition, and indicate a different pronunciation of a preceding or (see below).
In stressed syllables, represents both open and close . Similarly, represents both open and close (see the Italian phonology for further details on those sounds). There is typically no orthographic distinction between the open and close sounds represented, though accent marks are used in certain instances (see below). There are some minimal pairs, called heteronyms, where the same spelling is used for distinct words with distinct vowel sounds. In unstressed syllables, only the close variants occur.
In addition to representing the respective vowels and , and also typically represent the semivowels and , respectively, when unstressed and occurring before another vowel. Many exceptions exist (e.g. , , , , , , , , , , , ). An may indicate that a preceding or is 'soft' ().
C and G.
The letters and represent the plosives and before and before the vowels , , . They represent the affricates and respectively when they precede a front vowel ( or ).
The letter can also function within digraphs (two letters representing one sound) and to indicate "soft" (affricate) or before another vowel. In these instances, the vowel following the digraph is stressed, and represents no vowel sound: "ciò" (), "giù" (). An item such as "CIA" 'CIA', pronounced with stressed, contains no digraph. 
For words of more than one syllable, stress position must be known in order to distinguish between digraph or containing no actual phonological vowel and sequences of affricate and stressed . For example, the words "camicia" "shirt" and "farmacia" "pharmacy" share the spelling , but contrast in that only the first is stressed in "camicia", thus represents with no sound (likewise, "grigio" ends in and the names "Gianni" and "Gianna" contain only two actual vowels: , ). In "farmacia" is stressed, so that is not a digraph, but represents two of the three constituents of . 
When the "hard" (plosive) pronunciation or occurs before a front vowel or , digraphs and are used, so that represents or and represents or . The same principle applies to : and represent or and or .
In the evolution from Latin to Italian, the postalveolar affricates and were contextual variants of the velar consonants and . They eventually came to be full phonemes, and orthographic adjustments were introduced to distinguish them. The phonemicity of the affricates can be demonstrated with minimal pairs:
The trigraphs and are used to indicate geminate and , respectively, when they occur before or ; e.g. 'eyes', 'to dress up'.
 joins with to form a digraph representing palatal before , and with to represent with any vowel following. Between vowels these are pronounced phonetically long, as in "aglio" 'garlic', "ogni" 'each'. By way of exception, before represents in many words derived from Greek, such as 'wisteria'. before vowels other than represents straightforward . 
The digraph is used before and to represent ; before other vowels, is used for . Otherwise, represents , the of which follows the normal orthographic rules explained above.
Other than in a few Northern Italian dialects, intervocalic , , and are always geminated and no orthographic distinction is made to indicate this.
C and Q.
Normally is represented by , but it is represented by for etymological reasons in some words, such as , , , , and . These words all contain a sequence derived from an original which was subsequently diphthongized.
The sequence is normally spelled (e.g. ), but it is spelled in the words (as well as in its derivation ) and (or ) which is also written and pronounced (or ).
S and Z.
 and are ambiguous to voicing.
 represents a dental sibilant consonant, either or . However, these two phonemes are in complementary distribution everywhere except between two vowels in the same word and, even with such words, there are very few minimal pairs.
 always represents voiceless : , , , etc.
 represents a dental affricate consonant; either ( ) or ( ), depending on context, though there are few minimal pairs.
Between vowels and/or semivowels ( and ), is pronounced as if doubled ( or , e.g. , ).
 is generally voiceless /: , , , , etc. (exceptions: , , , , ). A major exception is the verbal ending "-izzare" (from Greek -ίζειν), in which it is always pronounced (e.g. ), and derived words (e.g. , a derivative of "utilizzare").
Silent H.
In addition to being used to indicate a hard or before front vowels (see above), is used to distinguish , , , (present indicative of , 'to have') from ('or'), ('to the', m. pl.), ('to'), ('year'); since is always silent, there is no difference in the pronunciation of such words. It is also used in , the apocopic form of "hanno". The letter is also used in some interjections, where it always comes immediately after the first vowel in the word (e.g. , , , ), as well as in some loanwords (e.g. ).
J, K, W, X and Y.
The letters J ("I lunga" 'long I'), K ("cappa"), W ("V doppia" or "doppia V" 'double V'), X ("ics") and Y ("ipsilon" or "I greca" 'Greek I') are used only in loanwords, proper names and archaisms, with few exceptions. 
In modern standard Italian spelling, only Latin words, proper nouns (such as Jesi, Letojanni, Juventus etc.) or those borrowed from foreign languages have . Until the 19th century, was used instead of in diphthongs, as a replacement for final "-ii", and in vowel groups (as in "Savoja"); this rule was quite strict in official writing. is also used to render in dialectal spelling, e.g. Romanesco dialect "ajo" ("garlic"; cf. Italian "aglio" ).
The letter is not in the standard alphabet and exists only in unassimilated loanwords, although it is often used informally among young people as a replacement for , paralleling the use of in English (for example, "ke" instead of "che").
Also is only used in loanwords, mainly of Germanic origin. A capital "W" is used as an abbreviation of "viva" or "evviva" ("long live").
In Italian, is either pronounced , as in "extra", "uxorio", "xilofono", or , as "exoterico", when it is preceded by and followed by a vowel. In several related languages, notably Venetian, it represents the voiced sibilant . It is also used, mainly amongst the young people, as a short written form for "per", meaning "for" (for example "x sempre", meaning "forever"): this is because in Italian the multiplication sign (similar to ) is called "per". However, is found only in loanwords, as it is not part of the standard Italian alphabet; in most words with , this letter may be replaced with 's' or 'ss' (with different pronunciation: "xilofono/silofono", "taxi/tassì") or, rarely, by 'cs' (with the same pronunciation: "claxon/").
Diacritics.
The acute accent (´) may be used on and to represent close-mid vowels when they are stressed in a position other than the default second-to-last syllable. This use of accents is generally mandatory only to indicate stress on a word-final vowel; elsewhere, accents are generally found only in dictionaries. Since final is hardly ever close-mid, is very rarely encountered in written Italian (e.g. 'subway', from the original French pronunciation of with a final-stressed ). 
The grave accent (`) is found on , , , , . It may be used on and when they represent open-mid vowels. The accents may also be used to differentiate minimal pairs within Italian (for example 'peach' vs. 'fishing'), but in practice this is limited to didactic texts. In the case of final and , both possibilities are encountered. By far the most common option is the grave accent, and , though this may be due to the rarity of the acute accent to represent stress; the alternative of employing the acute, and , is in practice limited to erudite texts, but can be justified as both vowels are high (as in Catalan). However, since there are no corresponding low (or lax) vowels to contrast with in Italian, both choices are equally acceptable.
The circumflex accent (^) can be used to mark the contraction of two vowels, especially a double, final may become . For example, it can be used to differentiate words like ('genes', plural of ) and ('geniuses', plural of ). This is especially seen in older texts, since two homophones are usually distinguished by the context. Current use prefers, with exceptions, a single instead of a double or a with circumflex.
Monosyllabic words generally lack an accent (e.g. , ). The accent is written, however, if there is an or a preceding another vowel (, ). This applies even if the is "silent", i.e. part of the digraphs or representing /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ (, ). It does not apply, however, if the word begins with (, ). Many monosyllabic words are spelled with an accent in order to avoid ambiguity with other words (e.g. , versus , ). This is known as "accento distintivo" and also occurs in other Romance languages (e.g. the Spanish "tilde diacrítica").