During the pre-Hispanic era, Old Tagalog was written using the Kawi or the Baybayin script.

For three
centuries Tagalog was written following, to some extent, the Spanish phonetic and orthographic rules.

Dr. José Rizal, was one of several proponents (including Trinidad Pardo de Tavera) of reforming the
orthographies of the various Philippine languages in the late 19th-century. Like other proponents, he
suggested to "indigenize" the alphabet of the Philippine languages by replacing the letters C and Q with
K.[2] Initially, these reforms were not broadly adopted when they were proposed but gradually became
popular into the early 20th century.

Following the establishment of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935, the government selected Tagalog
as basis for a "national language" (i.e. Filipino). Following this, the development of a dictionary and
grammar book for this "national language" started. In 1939, Lope K. Santos developed the Ang Balarila
ng Wikang Pambansa (The Grammar of the National Language) which, apart from containing grammar
rules, contained the 20-letter alphabet designated as Abakada.

The Abakada was replaced in 1976 with an expanded alphabet containing an additional 11 letters (C, CH,
F, J, LL, Ñ, Q, RR, V, X, and Z) which was in turn replaced with the current 28-letter modern alphabet. At
present, all languages of the Philippines may be written using the modern Filipino alphabet (officially
adopted in 1987), which includes all the letters of the Abakada.