In many applications, process variables are measured by categorical data with some natural order among their attribute levels, such as “good,” “marginal,” and “bad.” This paper considers monitoring ordinal categorical factors, which are determined by their latent continuous variables. The monitoring considers shifts in the location or scale parameters of latent variables, but only the ordinal attribute levels are observable. To this end, univariate and multivariate location‐scale log‐linear (LSL2) models are first established to describe a single ordinal factor and multiple ones, respectively. LSL2 models are founded on the score tests with respect to the location and scale parameters of continuous variables, which transform the detection of latent location and scale shifts into testing the coefficients of LSL2 models. Based on this, univariate and multivariate location‐scale ordinal control charts are proposed for detecting shifts in the location and scale parameters of the latent continuous variable of a single ordinal factor, as well as shifts in the location, scale, and correlation parameters of the underlying continuous variables of multiple ordinal factors. Simulation results have demonstrated the power of the proposed methods under various types of latent continuous distributions.