Generally, y in historic spellings of names formed with the -i affix (not to be confused with a possessive -i- of plural objects, as in szavai!) can exist after many other letters (e.g.: Teleky, Rákóczy, Dézsy). Here are listed only examples which can be easily misread because of such spelling.

Examples:

Historic spellings of article and conjunctions

In early editions the article a/az was written according to the following rules:

• before vowels and h — az: az ember, az híd
• before consonants — a': a' csillag.

The abbreviated form of the conjunction és (and), which is always written today as s, was likely to be written with an apostrophe before — ’s (e.g. föld ’s nép).

Capitalisation

The di- and the trigraphs are capitalised in names and at the beginning of sentences by capitalising the first glyph of them only.

• Csak jót mondhatunk Székely Csabáról.

In abbreviations and when writing with all capital letters, however, one capitalises the second (and third) character as well.

Thus ("The Rules of Hungarian Orthography", a book edited by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences):

• A magyar helyesírás szabályai
• MHSZ (not MHSz)
• A MAGYAR HELYESÍRÁS SZABÁLYAI (not SzABÁLyAI)

Alphabetical ordering (collation)

While the characters with diacritical marks are considered separate letters, vowels that differ only in length are treated the same when ordering words. Therefore, for example, the pairs O/Ó and Ö/Ő are not distinguished in ordering, but Ö follows O. In cases where two words are differentiated solely by the presence of an accent, the one without the accent is put before the other one. (The situation is the same for lower and upper-case letters: in alphabetical ordering, varga is followed by Varga.)

The polygraphic consonant signs are treated as single letters.

The simplified geminates of multigraphs (see above) such as <nny>, <ssz> are collated as <ny>+<ny>, <sz>+<sz> etc., if they are double geminates, rather than co-occurrences of a single letter and a geminate.

könnyű is collated as <k><ö><ny><ny><ű>. tizennyolc of course as <t><i><z><e><n><ny><o><l><c>, as this is a compound: tizen+nyolc ('above ten' + 'eight' = 'eighteen').

Similar 'ambiguities', which can occur with compounds (which are highly common in Hungarian) are dissolved and collated by sense.

e.g. házszám 'house number (address)' = ház + szám and of course not *házs + *zám.

These rules make Hungarian alphabetic ordering algorithmically difficult (one has to know the correct segmentation of a word to sort it correctly), which was a problem for computer software development.

Keyboard layout

The standard Hungarian keyboard layout is German-based (QWERTZ). This layout allows direct access to every character in the Hungarian alphabet.

Capitalisation

The di- and the trigraphs are capitalised in names and at the beginning of sentences by capitalising the first glyph of them only.

• Csak jót mondhatunk Székely Csabáról.

In abbreviations and when writing with all capital letters, however, one capitalises the second (and third) character as well.

Thus ("The Rules of Hungarian Orthography", a book edited by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences):

• A magyar helyesírás szabályai
• MHSZ (not MHSz)
• A MAGYAR HELYESÍRÁS SZABÁLYAI (not SzABÁLyAI)

Alphabetical ordering (collation)

While the characters with diacritical marks are considered separate letters, vowels that differ only in length are treated the same when ordering words. Therefore, for example, the pairs O/Ó and Ö/Ő are not distinguished in ordering, but Ö follows O. In cases where two words are differentiated solely by the presence of an accent, the one without the accent is put before the other one. (The situation is the same for lower and upper-case letters: in alphabetical ordering, varga is followed by Varga.)

The polygraphic consonant signs are treated as single letters.

comb
cukor
csak	<cs> comes after <c>
...
folyik
folyó	<ó> is sorted as <o>
folyosó
...
fő	and <ő> is sorted as <ö>,
födém	but <ö> comes after <o>
...

The simplified geminates of multigraphs (see above) such as <nny>, <ssz> are collated as <ny>+<ny>, <sz>+<sz> etc., if they are double geminates, rather than co-occurrences of a single letter and a geminate.

könnyű is collated as <k><ö><ny><ny><ű>. tizennyolc of course as <t><i><z><e><n><ny><o><l><c>, as this is a compound: tizen+nyolc ('above ten' + 'eight' = 'eighteen').

Similar 'ambiguities', which can occur with compounds (which are highly common in Hungarian) are dissolved and collated by sense.

e.g. házszám 'house number (address)' = ház + szám and of course not *házs + *zám.

These rules make Hungarian alphabetic ordering algorithmically difficult (one has to know the correct segmentation of a word to sort it correctly), which was a problem for computer software development.

Keyboard layout

The most common letters in Hungarian are e and a.^[6]

The list below shows the letter frequencies for the smaller Hungarian alphabet in descending order.

The most common letters in Hungarian are e and a.^[6]

The list below shows the letter frequencies for the smaller Hungarian alphabet in descending order.

Letter	Frequency
e	12.256%

The list below shows the letter frequencies for the smaller Hungarian alphabet in descending order.

Letter	Frequency
e	12.256%
a	9.428%
t	7.380%