Stokoe notation (/ˈstoʊki/ STOH-kee) is the first phonemic script used for sign languages. It was created by William Stokoe for American Sign Language (ASL), with Latin letters and numerals used for the shapes they have in fingerspelling, and iconic glyphs to transcribe the position, movement, and orientation of the hands. It was first published as the organizing principle of Sign Language Structure: An Outline of the Visual Communication Systems of the American Deaf (1960), and later also used in A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles, by Stokoe, Casterline, and Croneberg (1965). In the 1965 dictionary, signs are themselves arranged alphabetically, according to their Stokoe transcription, rather than being ordered by their English glosses as in other sign-language dictionaries. This made it the only ASL dictionary where the reader could look up a sign without first knowing how to translate it into English. The Stokoe notation was later adapted to British Sign Language (BSL) in Kyle et al. (1985) and to Australian Aboriginal sign languages in Kendon (1988). In each case the researchers modified the alphabet to accommodate phonemes not found in ASL.

The Stokoe notation is mostly restricted to linguists and academics. The notation is arranged linearly on the page and can be written with a typewriter that has the proper font installed. Unlike SignWriting or the Hamburg Notation System, it is based on the Latin alphabet and is phonemic, being restricted to the symbols needed to meet the requirements of ASL (or extended to BSL, etc.) rather than accommodating all possible signs. For example, there is a single symbol for circling movement, regardless of whether the plane of the movement is horizontal or vertical.

Stokoe notation is written horizontally left to right like the Latin alphabet (plus limited vertical stacking of movement symbols, and some diacritical marks written above or below other symbols). This contrasts with SignWriting, which is written vertically from top to bottom (plus partially free two-dimensional placement of components within the writing of a single sign).

Stokoe coined the terms tab ("tabula" or sign location), dez ("designator" or handshape & orientation), and sig ("signation" or motion & action). These are used to categorize features of sign-language phonemes, somewhat like the distinction between consonant, vowel, and tone is used in the description of oral languages. A sign is written in the order tab-dez-sig: TD^s. Compound signs are separated with a double dashed pipe, approximately TD^s¦¦TD^s.

A serious deficiency of the system is that it does not provide for facial expression, mouthing, eye gaze, and body posture, as Stokoe had not worked out their phonemics in ASL. Verbal inflection and non-lexical movement is awkward to notate, and more recent analyses such as those of Ted Supalla have contradicted Stokoe's set of motion phonemes.^{[citation needed]} There is also no provision for representing the relationship between signs in their natural context, which restricts the usefulness of the notation to the lexical or dictionary level. Nonetheless, Stokoe demonstrated for the first time that a sign language can be written phonemically just like any other language.

In the tables below, the first column is a web-based approximation of the Stokoe symbol using the inventory available in Unicode, and the second is an ASCII substitution for the purpose of citing examples in this article. Proper display of the third column requires the Stokoe font available at the external link below; without that font, you will see the corresponding ASCII character, as used in Mandel (1993).

The tab symbols are a null sign for a neutral location and iconic symbols for parts of the head, arm, and torso. In addition, the dez (handshape) symbols below may be used to indicate that the location is the passive hand in a specific shape.

Given a handshape (dez) ⟨D⟩, ⟨QD⟩ would be D signed at the face, ⟨JD⟩ the same handshape signed at the elbow, and ⟨9D⟩ on the inside of the wrist.