Greek orthography has used a variety of diacritics starting in the Hellenistic period. The more complex polytonic orthography (Greek: πολυτονικὸ σύστημα γραφῆς, romanized: polytonikò sýstīma grafī̂s), which includes five diacritics, notates Ancient Greek phonology. The simpler monotonic orthography (Greek: μονοτονικό σύστημα γραφής, romanized: monotonikó sýstīma grafī́s), introduced in 1982, corresponds to Modern Greek phonology, and requires only two diacritics.
Polytonic orthography (from Ancient Greek πολύς (polýs) 'much, many' and τόνος (tónos) 'accent') is the standard system for Ancient Greek and Medieval Greek and includes:
