This paper deals with the issue of Juba Arabic (JA) as a written language and investigates various written materials produced from early 20th century up to the early 21st century. The investigated writings are presented in their socio-historical context in order to determine in which ways genres and contexts impact writing practices, particularly regarding orthographic and grammatical choices. These choices are analyzed following the notions of sameness and distance used for evaluating literacy processes in non-standard languages. The paper highlights the key moments and key agents of the codification of JA as a written language and the new developments led by the use of the internet.