A syllabic writing system, introduced by Anglican missionaries in the late nineteenth century and modeled on the syllabary earlier developed for Cree, is now the preferred writing of Inuktitut in much of the central Canadian area, with a roman orthography in common use only in Labrador and from Cambridge Bay westward. In Nunavut, the Inuinnaqtun dialect of the western Kitikmeot region is written in a roman orthography, while in the rest of the territory syllabics are used, and this distinction more than phonological or lexical dialect differences is the principal obstacle to standardization.

Literacy is high, both in roman and syllabic orthographies.