The Tai Le script is approximately 700–800 years old and has used several different orthographic conventions.

Evidence suggests that the Lik scripts have a common origin from an Old Burmese or Mon prototype before the fifteenth century, most probably in the polity of Mong Mao.

[6] The Lik Tai script featured on a 1407 Ming dynasty scroll exhibits many features of the Burmese script, including fourteen of the nineteen consonants, three medial diacritics and the high tone marker.

[8] Government-led reforms of the main Tai Nuea traditional scripts began in Dehong the 1950s.

[10] In Mueng Sing today, the smaller glyphs are not used and two main styles of Lik Tho Ngok are recognised by local scribes: To Lem (Tai Nüa: to1 lem3 ‘edged letters,’) which have straighter edges and more pointed angles, and To Mon (Tai Nüa: to1 mon4 ‘rounded letters’) without sharp angles.

Lik Tho Ngok and the reformed Tai Le script are used in the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, as well as Lik To Mon and the reformed Shan script (in areas near the Myanmar border).

[2][15] Today the reformed Tai Le script, which removes ambiguity in reading and adds tone markers, is widely used by the Tai Dehong and Tai Mao in the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, but not in Tai Nuea communities in the Jinggu Dai and Yi Autonomous County, the Menglian Dai, Lahu and Va Autonomous County, and the Gengma Dai and Va Autonomous County, where only the traditional scripts are used.

The Tai Le script was added to the Unicode Standard in April 2003 with the release of version 4.0.