Quote Originally Posted by beloitpiper View Post
Going with what McMillan said, for a long time Scots didn't have standardized spelling. In fact, most of the time it's wasn't written at all. Except on a few occasions (Robert Burns) it was exclusively spoken language. That is what makes it so difficult to write. Nowadays, the Ulster-Scots Agency (Tha Boord O' Ulster-Scots) is working to standardize the spelling, but it's still a good ways away.
Scots has been written since the mediaeval times. (There are many legal documents written in it.) Therefore it obviously had an orthography. It was probably about as good as English - though that's not saying much! Unfortunately, written Scots was not completely standardised and interest in that waned considerably after 1707. (I wonder why?)