cacographies

Noun

cacography (countable and uncountable, plural cacographies)

1. Bad spelling or punctuation, especially unintuitive spellings considered as a feature of a whole language or dialect.
   • A phrase exhibits proofs of cacography, when the accents are misplaced, forgotten, or used erroneously.1846, Gabriel Surenne, A Practical Grammar of French Rhetoric, IV.4.1

   Antonyms:

   orthography

2. Deliberate comic misspelling; malapropism.
   • The soul of dialect is cacography, the deliberate misspelling of words for comic effect, which is the written equivalent of the malapropism.2003, Onwuchekwa Jemie, editor, Yo' Mama!, page 10
3. Poor or illegible handwriting.
   • Many illegible letters is the sign of disorder, and the illegibility of Greeley's cacography has furnished numberless anecdotes.1904, John Rexford, What Handwriting Indicates, pages 90–91

   Antonyms:

   calligraphy