Substantial research has focused on the relationship between spelling and sound, but we know little about the relationship between spelling and meaning in alphabetic writing systems. I will present the results of computational analyses and behavioural experiments demonstrating that spellings in English tend to be reserved for particular meaningful functions. Further, skilled readers assimilate these meaningful regularities and capitalize on them when they read and write. Finally, using pilot data from an artificial language learning experiment, I will attempt to shed some light on how and why spellings change over time.