The Lao script is used mainly to write the Lao language.

The minority languages of Laos are also written in the Lao script, and officially it is the only script to write them in Laos, but many speakers of Hmong prefer the Latin alphabet.

The Lao script is derived from the Khmer script, which explains the similarities between the Lao script and the Thai script. However, since the spelling reform carried out in the 1960s, the modern Lao script is more concise and more phonetic than the previous Lao script and the Thai script.

Consonants

The table below shows the Lao consonant letters with their phonetic value in the International Phonetic Alphabet, and transcriptions according to the US Board on Geographic Names and the British Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (BGN/PCGN), the US Library of Congress (ALA/LC) and the transcriptions used in the Unicode names of the letters.

• #df58248c414f342c81e056b40bee12d17a08bf61## A zero consonant, but also used for vowels.

Vowel nuclei

The table below shows the Lao vowel nuclei, combined with the consonant ກ.
(provisional version)

* indicates variations no longer used in the reformed spelling

Lao compatibile software

Lao was not officially released for Windows until the Windows Vista. Although user generated fonts are freely avalible online, requiring the user to download the fonts, place them into the "Windows", "Fonts", folder, and then open a Internet Explorer window and select the following; "Tools", "Internet Options", and on the 'General' tab, they need to click on the "Fonts" option and then select the font that they downloaded.

Lao in Unicode

The Unicode range for Lao is U+0E80–U+0EFF. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points. Although there are many unassigned code points, the ones that are assigned for Lao characters match the relative positions of the corresponding .