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On January 25, 1908, an Orthography Commission was founded at the Science Union of the Latvian Society with Kārlis Mīlenbahs as its chairman. On June 17, 1908, the Orthography Commission cast a convincing vote for a new orthography. The main principles of this newly conceived orthography was marked essentially by the following characteristics:

a) use of Roman letters in print;

b) dropping of “h” as a lengthening mark;

c) all long vowels to be denominated with a horizontal dash notwithstanding their position;

d) diphthongs ie and o to  be denominated according to the Lithuanian model – ie and uo;

e) cluster letters sch, zch, tsch  to be discarded;

f) palatal consonants to be denominated by a mark above or a comma under the respective consonant; w must not be used in any position.

Starting with 1909, this orthography was taught in schools. In 1919, an instruction was issued by the Commissariat of Education “On the Latvian Language Writing in Schools” for most part accepting the 1908 orthography with a single exception:  the diphthongs ie and o had to be written as ee and o. During the 20ies and 30ies of the 20th century, the consolidation process of this orthography in practical writing followed.

In the 16th century, the first authors of books written in Latvian were German clergymen, who moulded the Latvian writing in accordance with their own German reading and writing skills. The main features of this orthography were the Gottic letters “h” as a lengthening mark; the so called “cluster letters” for indicating the consonants š, ž, č; differences in the reproduction of diphthongs, for example “ee” and “o”, which all in all could be viewed as an immense inconsistency. Several rather successful attempts to improve the Latvian writing were made as early as the 17th–18th century (G. Mancelis, K. Fīrekers, H. Adolfijs, orthography sessions for the second edition of the Bible), but they mostly concerned themselves with the changes in sound denominations. The possibility of changing the Gothic type for Roman letters was not discussed. However, in 1847, the Latvian doctor, Juris Bārs, initiated essential changes in the writing of the Latvian language. He made the following proposals: enact the use of Roman letters; denominate the long vowels with two types of lengthening marks depending on the intonation; denominate the diphthongs ie and uo with ia and ua;  denominate the letters s, z, c with Roman letters, but reflect the palatal consonants by crossed respective consonant letters; retain the letter w.