The syllable in the production of written words

It is now well documented that the syllable is a sublexical processing unit involved in writing words. In this article we review findings that support the idea that the syllable plays a part in writing, drawn from neuropsychological studies and psycholinguistics experiments with adults and children, and we address the following issues: Is the syllable involved in writing words phonological or orthographic? Could the outcomes attributed to the syllable in fact be linked to orthographic redundancy—in other words to letter succession frequency? Is the involvement of the syllable observed in all languages, independently of their degree of orthographic regularity? How does syllable processing develop during literacy learning? This article aims to provide answers to these questions by reviewing the latest developments in the field.