Monotonic orthography is the simplified way for spelling modern Greek introduced in 1982. It replaces all the traditional Greek accents—acute accent ( ), grave accent ( ` ), and circumflex ( ˆ or ˜ )—with only one, the acute accent, and abandons the use of the rough breathing or spiritus asper ( ʼ ) and smooth breathing or spiritus lenis ( ʽ ).
The simplification was justified by the fact that the polytonic orthography was complex and difficult to learn, and the diacritics had no significance in modern speech, merely giving some etymological information about the words and their ancient pronunciation. The simplification was frowned upon by some people who believe that it provides a cultural link to the past. The Greek Orthodox church, for example, continues to use polytonic orthography, and some books are still published in polytonic.
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