Writing system

Main articles: Tamil script and Tamil braille

See also: Arwi, Vatteluttu, Grantha script, and Pallava script
Jambai Tamil Brahmi inscription dated to the early Sangam age
After Tamil Brahmi fell out of use, Tamil was written using a script called the
va??e?uttu amongst others such as Grantha and Pallava script. The current Tamil
script consists of 12 vowels, 18 consonants and one special character, the aytam
. The vowels and consonants combine to form 216 compound characters, giving a to
tal of 247 characters (12 + 18 + 1 + (12 x 18)). All consonants have an inherent
vowel a, as with other Indic scripts. This inherent vowel is removed by adding
a tittle called a pu??i, to the consonantal sign. For example, ? is ?a (with the
inherent a) and ?? is ? (without a vowel). Many Indic scripts have a similar si
gn, generically called virama, but the Tamil script is somewhat different in tha
t it nearly always uses a visible pu??i to indicate a dead consonant (a consonan
t without a vowel). In other Indic scripts, it is generally preferred to use a l
igature or a half form to write a syllable or a cluster containing a dead conson
ant, although writing it with a visible virama is also possible. The Tamil scrip
t does not differentiate voiced and unvoiced plosives. Instead, plosives are art
iculated with voice depending on their position in a word, in accordance with th
e rules of Tamil phonology.
In addition to the standard characters, six characters taken from the Grantha sc
ript, which was used in the Tamil region to write Sanskrit, are sometimes used t
o represent sounds not native to Tamil, that is, words adopted from Sanskrit, Pr
akrit and other languages. The traditional system prescribed by classical gramma
rs for writing loan-words, which involves respelling them in accordance with Tam
il phonology, remains, but is not always consistently applied.[100]