Page "Zurich German" Paragraph 9

Like all Swiss German dialects, it is essentially a spoken language, whereas the written language is standard German.

Likewise, there is no official orthography of the Zurich dialect.

When it is written, it rarely follows the guidelines published by Eugen Dieth in his book Schwyzertütschi Dialäktschrift ; in fact, only language experts know about these guidelines.

Furthermore, Dieth's spelling uses a lot of diacritical marks not found on a normal keyboard.

Young people often use dialect for personal messages, such as when texting with their mobile phones.

As they do not have a standard way of writing they tend to blend Standard German spelling with Swiss German phrasing.