Crimean Tatar is written in both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Before 1928, the Perso-Arabic script was the main orthography.

Before the official introduction of the Common Turkic-based Latin alphabet by the Verkhovna Rada of Crimea in the 1990s, the Cyrillic alphabet was the main orthography. After the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, the Russian government required solely the use of the Cyrillic script. In 2021, the Ukrainian government began the transition to the Latin script.

The Tatars of Romania use a different orthography. The letters Á, Ç, Ğ, Í, Î, Ñ, Ó, Ş, and Ú were added in the Dobrujan Tatar orthography in 1956.

Crimean Tatars used the Perso-Arabic script from the 16th century to 1928, when it was replaced by the Latin alphabet based on Yañalif. The Crimean variant contained a couple of modified Arabic letters.

Prior to its replacement, same as and in parallel with several other Arabic-based orthographies of Turkic and Caucasian languages across the Soviet Union, several improvements and standardizations were introduced in order to make the writing more clear and more closely matching spoken pronunciations, the first one being adopted in 1921, and the second in 1924.

Below table lists the letters used in Crimean Tatar Arabic script.

As per the 1921 and 1924 Crimean Tatar Arabic alphabet orthographic conventions, all vowels were to be written, as shown in the table below.

The distinction between front and back vowel sounds "o, u, ı" versus "ö, ü, i" weren't marked. These were derived and understood from context and in following vowel harmony rules. Below general rules are noted in Crimean Tatar, same as other Turkic languages.