[Common]
Copied=Copied

[Common.Mon]
1=January {1}
2=February {1}
3=March {1}
4=April {1}
5=May {1}
6=June {1}
7=July {1}
8=August {1}
9=September {1}
10=October {1}
11=November {1}
12=December {1}

[Common.Favs]
Add=Added to Favourites
Rem=Removed from Favourites

[Dating.Century]
1=1st
2=2nd
3=3rd
4=4th
5=5th
6=6th
7=7th
8=8th
9=9th
10=10th
11=11th
12=12th
13=13th
14=14th
15=15th
16=16th
17=17th
18=18th
19=19th
20=20th

[Dating.Name]
YBc=$ BC
YBefore=before $
YApprox=≈$
YApproxBc=≈$ BC
Decade=$s
Century=$ century
CenturyBc=$ century BC
Unknown=unknown

[Dating.StdComment]
FirstInsc=first known inscription
ModernForm=in modern form
MaybeEarlier=maybe earlier

[Prop.Head]
NonChar=Non-character
Empty=Vacant position
Block=Block info
Script=Script info
Control=About control characters
DefIgn=Default-ignorable character
Emoji16=Graphic <a {1}>emoji</a> requires U+FE0F (=VS16)
SuttonNoFill=No fills and rotations
NChars={1|one=? character|many=? characters}
NChars2={1} ({2|one=? character|many=? characters})
NoHent=without <a {1} >Hentaigana</a>
NoHent3={1} ({2|one=? character|many=? characters} without <a {3} >Hentaigana</a>)
Comp=String content
Uc=Unicode {1}
Em=Emoji {1}
EqEm==emoji {1}, 
NewBlk=New blocks
AffBlk=Affects blocks

[Prop.Deprec]
0=<a {1}>Deprecated character</a>
1=<a {1}>Deprecated character</a>, used to revert to default state
Ins=<a {1}>Deprecated character</a>, use {2} instead
Ins2=<a {1}>Deprecated character</a>, use {2} or {3} instead
2=<a {1}>Deprecated character</a>, use other bidirectional mechanisms instead
3=<a {1}>Deprecated character</a>, use specific Arabic presentation forms instead
4=<a {1}>Deprecated character</a>, use 0660…69 and other national digits
5=<a {1}>Deprecated character</a>, use application-level protocols

[Prop.Bidi.DIR]
Name=Direction tag
Short=Direction tag
Text=Format characters that correct operation of Unicode bidirectional algorithm.\n\nStrictly saying, each of these characters is a separate class in bidirectional algorithm, but for non-programmers it’s enough to know: these are direction tags.

[Prop.Bidi.AL]
Name=Arabic letter
Short=Arabic letter
Text=Written right to left. There are some subtle rules related to European numbers.

[Prop.Bidi.AN]
Name=Arabic number
Short=Arabic number
Text=Written right to left. There are some subtle rules related no nesting levels.

[Prop.Bidi.B]
Name=Paragraph separator
Short=Paragraph separator
Text=Every paragraph is processed separately with bidirectional algorithm.

[Prop.Bidi.BN]
Name=Boundary neutral
Short=Boundary neutral
Text=[[pt:control|Control characters]], joiners and [[pk:E0000|tags]] that have no graphic representation.\n\nSee [[pt:graphic|graphic character]].

[Prop.Bidi.CS]
Name=Common separator
Short=Common separator
Text=When appear in European or Arabic number, these characters become its part.

[Prop.Bidi.EN]
Name=European number
Short=European number
Text=Written left to right. There are subtle rules related to Arabic text.

[Prop.Bidi.ES]
Name=European separator
Short=European separator
Text=+ and − characters inside a European number become its part. ± character is outside of this class.

[Prop.Bidi.ET]
Name=European terminator
Short=European terminator
Text=Currency and other characters that commonly appear near numbers. When near a European number, these characters become its part.

[Prop.Bidi.L]
Name=Left-to-right
Short=→
Text=Latin, Cyrillic and other scripts written left-to-right. As [[ps:Hani|CJK ideographs]] are the most numerous part of Unicode, it is the pargest class.

[Prop.Bidi.NSM]
Name=Non-spacing mark
Short=Non-spacing mark
Text=Non-spacing and enclosing combining marks. Writing direction is borrowed from base character.

[Prop.Bidi.ON]
Name=Other neutral
Short=Other neutral
Text=Adapts to direction of surrounding text.

[Prop.Bidi.NM]
Name=Mirroring neutral
Short=Mirroring neutral
Text=Parentheses and other similar characters are mirrored. All these characters are neutral, as they adapt to direction of surrounding text.

[Prop.Bidi.R]
Name=Right-to-left
Short=←
Text=[[ps:Hebr|Hebrew]] and historical scripts of Middle East.\n\n[[pb:AL|Arabic letters]] behave differently with European numbers and comprise a separate category.

[Prop.Bidi.S]
Name=Segment separator
Short=Segment separator
Text=Three control characters: 09 (tabulation), 0B (vertical tabulation), 1F (separator 1).

[Prop.Bidi.WS]
Name=Whitespace
Short=Whitespace
Text=Neutral. There are subtle rules regarding text formatting with spaces.\n\nSee also [[pt:space|space]].

[Prop.Num]
Digit=Digit
SpecDigit=Special digit
Number=Number
Or={1} or {2}
CjkRare=CJK number (rarely)
CjkAccount=CJK number (anti-forgery)
CjkZhuang=Zhuang number
CjkVietnamese=Vietnamese number

[Prop.Input]
Bullet=Input
Birman=Birman
AltCode=Alt code
Sometimes=sometimes {1}
Twice=twice {1}
Space=Space

[Prop.Bullet]
EngTech=Technical name
Range=Range
VerAppear=Appeared in version
NonChars=Non-characters
Empty=Vacant positions
VerFilled=Filled in version
Version=Unicode version
InTech=In technical documentation
Block=Block
Script=Script
Type=Type
Bidi=In bidirectional writing
Computers=Computers
Dir=Direction
Langs=Languages
Appear=Appeared
Condition=Status
Plane=Plane
base=Base
Utf8=UTF-8
Utf16=UTF-16
Utf32=UTF-32
Html=HTML
AllVer=All characters are in Unicode version
EmojiVer=Approved in emoji version
EmojiV=Emoji {1}
EmojiV2==Unicode {1}, 
EmojiVA=≈Unicode {1}, 
CameAfter=, after Unicode {1}
Extend=Extended
Shrunk=Shrunk

[Prop.Os]
Invisible=(Invisible)
Tofu=(Absent in system)
NonChar=(Non-character)
Empty=(Vacant position)
FontsFor=Fonts for U+%04X
Style=(OS style)

[Prop.Life]
Alive=alive ''(no threats for main language, like Cyrillic)''
Danger=endangered due to language ''(like Cherokee)''
Competing=endangered due to script competition ''(like Tai Tham)''
Dead=dead ''(will lose soon/recently lost users, like Nüshu)''
Sacred=religious ''(dead in secular use, like Coptic)''
New=new ''(appeared recently, like N’Ko)''
Reborn=revived ''(like Tifinagh)''
Exp=experimental ''(attempt to make a new script for existing language, like Deseret)''
Conserved=historical, no decipherment needed ''(like Glagolitic)''
Undeciphered=undecipered ''(like Linear A)''
Partly=partly deciphered ''(like Carian)''
Deciphered=deciphered ''(like cuneiform)''
ForRev=made for revival of dead language ''(like Osage)''

[Prop.Dir]
L=→
R=←
L_cjk=→ ''(historically ←↓↓ in columns)''
L_cunei=←↓↓ in columns, then →
L_ogam=→, ↑
L_col=↓↓→ in columns
TD=↓
Both=wrote both ← and →
R_col=←↓↓ in columns
R_most=mostly ←
Sogd=↓↓→ in columns; ←

[Prop.Type]
Alph=[[pt:alphabet|alphabetic]]{{-}}''like Cyrillic''
Argu=[[pt:arguable|arguable]]{{-}}''like Thaana''
Cons=[[pt:abjad|consonant]]{{-}}''like Hebrew''
Syll=[[pt:syllabic|syllabic]]{{-}}''like Japanese Katakana/Hiragana''
Asyl=alphasyllabic{{-}}''like Old Persian cuneiform''
Abug=[[pt:abugida|abugida]]{{-}}''like Ethiopic''
Brah=[[pt:brahmic|Brahmic abugida]]{{-}}''like Devanagari''
Hier=[[pt:hiero|ideographic]]{{-}}''like CJK ideographs''
Syhi=ideosyllabic{{-}}''like Linear B''
Cohi=ideoconsonant{{-}}''like Egyptian hieroglyphs''
Code=[[pt:code|codes and shorthand]]{{-}}''like Braille embossings''
Nota=[[pt:nontext|non-text]]{{-}}''like musical notes''

[Prop.Kx]
Bullet=Radical
Data={1} {2} {3|one=? stroke|many=? strokes}

[Prop.Ver]
Ext=Extended
Shr=Shrunk

[Prop.Lang]
Qty={1} as of {2}
QtyNative={1} as native as of {2}
QtyIndia={1} in India as of {2}
QtyTotal=total {1} as of {2}
Year={1}
Decade={1}s

[Prop.Lang.Num]
Unit={1} people
Tho={1}k
Mil={1}M
Bil={1}bn

[Prop.LangLoc]
AfricaC=Central Africa
AfricaW=Western Africa
Bangladesh=Bangladesh
Bhutan=Bhutan
Cambodia=Cambodia
China=China
Ethiopia=Ethiopia
IndiaCen=Central India
IndiaE=Eastern India
IndiaN=Northern India
IndiaNe=North-Eastern India
IndiaS=South India
IndiaSe=South-Eastern India
IndiaSw=South-Western India
IndiaW=Western India
Liberia=Liberia
Myanmar=Myanmar
Nepal=Nepal
Pakistan=Pakistan
SierraLeone=Sierra Leone
SriLanka=Sri Lanka
Sumatra=Sumatra
Thailand=Thailand
Usa=USA
Vietnam=Vietnam

[Block.Stock]
Arab=Arabic extended {1}
Cyrl=Cyrillic extended {1}
Hani=CJK unified ideographs extension {1}
Hira=Kana extended {1}
Latn=Latin extended {1}
Mymr=Myanmar extended {1}
ZARR=Arrows supplemental {1}
ZMAT=Mathematical symbols miscellaneous {1}

[Block.0000]
Name=Latin basic (ASCII)
Text='''Americal Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)''' is a seven-bit character encoding developed in the USA in 1963. A width of 7 bits was chosen as a compromise for data transfer via telegraph. If it’s too much, ASCII may be easily cut to 6 bits, leaving characters 40…5F and 20…3F. '''Basic Latin''' of Unicode is the same as ASCII, so English Unicode text is readable even in wrong encoding.\n\nThe first 32 characters, 00…1F, are [[pt:control|control]], and few of them are used today. They are followed with 95 printable characters. Many of them go back to typewriters: to print À, you need to type A, return carriage one position back, and type backquote. The last character, 7F=DEL, goes back to punched tapes{{-}}holes punched in all tracks tell that the character is punched by mistake and should{{_}}not be read.\n\nMany national variants of ASCII existed: Britain replaced hash # with pound £, USSR dollar $ with coin ¤, Germany [\\]{|} with umlauts ÄÖÜäöü, Japan backslash \\ with yen ¥…\n\nThe rest 128 characters could be filled with everything. One such 8-bit encoding, [[pt:latin1|Latin-1]], also came to Unicode.

[Block.0080]
Name=Latin-1 supplement
Text=Latin-1 is a second name of 8-bit encoding '''ISO{{_}}8859-1''' introduced in 1987 and extending [[pt:ascii|ASCII]] to European languages.\n\nThe first 32 characters, 80…9F, are [[pt:control|control]] for compatibility with 7-bit encodings: mail programs sometimes lost the upper bit, and it’s infeasible to have [[pt:graphic|printable]] characters here. Nowadays these characters are not{{_}}used as intended and serve as [[pt:private|private-use]]. For example, Windows-1252 encoding is the same Latin-1, but control positions are replaced with typography characters. It got to the point where World Wide Web standards say: if a page requests ISO{{_}}8859-1, display it in Windows-1252.\n\nWe see characters × and ÷ among letters. Initially Œœ should have been there, but the French delegate insisted that OE was enough.

[Block.0100]
Text=Contains characters of Central and Eastern Europe, Baltic and Celtic languages, Saami, Maltese, Turkish, Esperanto and a few others.

[Block.0180]
Text=Contains characters of Slovene, Croatian, Romanian, Livonian, Zhuang, Pinyin (Latin trascription of Chinese), African, Native American languages, and old (pre-1930) Latin of xUSSR languages.

[Block.0250]
Name=IPA extensions
Text=The International Phonetic Alphabet based on Latin is used by linguists, speech therapists, singers and actors to convey transcription of languages. To convey additional speech disorders such as tooth gnashing and lisping, IPA extensions are used.\n\nIn reality, most characters of this block are not{{_}}extensions but ordinary IPA: for example, {{sm|ɦ}} is present in Russian “ага” ''(aha)'', Ukrainian “гривня” ''(hryvnia)'' and Czech “hrad”.\n\nOpera singers often sing in unknown languages, and their ability to read transcription signs is often used by dictionary authors. Particularly, the well-known sound “Yanny or Laurel” was recorded by opera singer Jay Aubrey Jones{{-}}low male voice that came through low-quality speaker and microphone of the same quality turned to Yanny.\n\nAlso using IPA characters you can turn a text upside-down for a joke.

[Block.02B0]
Name=Spacing modifier letters
Text=Modifier letters are used in phonetics and linguistics to convey tones, length, palatalization, incompletely pronounced and conditional phonemes: English ''car'' is written as {{sm|[kɑːʳ]}}, and the last two characters are modifiers that mean length and conditional {{t|r}}.\n\nThis block also has [[pt:spacing|spacing]] copies of diacritical marks.

[Block.0300]
Name=Combining diacritical marks
Text=Diacritical marks are above-line, below-line and inline characters affixed to letters, and modifying or clarifying their meanings. For example, accent like in ''résumé''.\n\nUnicode provides two ways of conveying diacritics, [[pt:precomposed|precomposed]] characters and combinations “main character +{{_}}'''[[pt:combining|combining]] mark'''”. To simplify search in such a mess, Unicode has an algorithm of [[pt:normalization|normalization]].\n\nCharacters 034F CGJ is not{{_}}a{{_}}joiner, but ''disjoiner'' of digraphs. It’s used in Czech (ch is pronounced as {{t|x}}, and alphabetical order is ce &lt;{{_}}c+CGJ+h &lt;{{_}}ci &lt;{{_}}d &lt;{{_}}ch), Hungarian, Hebrew and some other languages.\n\nCharacter 0310 Candrabindu is intended for writing Indic languages in Latin and Cyrillic. Every [[pt:brahmic|Indic]] script has its own candrabindu.

[Block.0370]
Name=Greek and Coptic

[Block.0400]
Name=Cyrillic

[Block.0500]
Name=Cyrillic supplement
Text=Letters of small Cyrillic languages: Abkhaz, Kurdish ''(as minority of the USSR)'', Komi, Mordovian, Aleut, Azeri ''(now [[ps:Latn|Latin]])'' and Chuvash in Yakovlev alphabet ''(used 1873–1938)''.\n\nContains a funny letter {{sm|Ԥ}} (looks like the word of Russian mat meaning “epic fail”). It was “invented” by Leonid Kaganov; it turned out, not{{_}}the{{_}}first: three years before his post (2008) T-shirts with this letter were sold in Russia. And independently from him, Abkhazians instead of hook {{sm|Ҧ}} {{t|pʰ}} started to write descender, and that gave letter {{sm|Ԥ}} a place in Unicode.

[Block.0530]
Name=Armenian

[Block.0590]
Name=Hebrew

[Block.0600]
Name=Arabic

[Block.0700]
Name=Syriac

[Block.0750]
Name=Arabic supplement
Text=Letters for African languages, Pakistan and early Persian.

[Block.0780]
Name=Thaana

[Block.07C0]
Name=N’Ko

[Block.0800]
Name=Samaritan

[Block.0840]
Name=Mandaic

[Block.0860]
Name=Syriac supplement
Text='''Suriyani''' or '''Karshoni''', unusual form of writing [[ps:Mlym|Malayalam]] with Syriac letters. Was used by Indian Christians until 19th century.

[Block.0870]
Text=Characters for comments to Quran. Also Bosnian (a dialect of Serbo-Croatian sometimes written with Arabic letters), Pegon (writing of Indonesian languages with Arabic letters), Egyptian piastre (currency before 1834), and Egyptian pound (modern currency).\n\n[[pt:bmp|Base Plane]] was almost full in 2021, and you may ask: why do they allocate such rare characters? Unicode allocates right-to-left superblocks beforehand, and range 0590…08FF was already right-to-left.

[Block.08A0]
Text=Additional Arabic letters for [[ps:Rohg|Rohingya]] ''(Myanmar)'', Belorussian, Tatar, Bashkir, Arvi ''(India, Sri Lanka)'', Shahmukhi ''([[ps:Guru|Punjabi]])'', Hindko ''(Pakistan)'' and African languges (e.g. Berber). Also signs of comments to Quran.

[Block.0900]
Name=Devanagari

[Block.0980]
Name=Bengali

[Block.0A00]
Name=Gurmukhi

[Block.0A80]
Name=Gujarati

[Block.0B00]
Name=Odia (Oriya)

[Block.0B80]
Name=Tamil

[Block.0C00]
Name=Telugu

[Block.0C80]
Name=Kannada

[Block.0D00]
Name=Malayalam

[Block.0D80]
Name=Sinhala

[Block.0E00]
Name=Thai

[Block.0E80]
Name=Lao

[Block.0F00]
Name=Tibetan

[Block.1000]
Name=Myanmar

[Block.10A0]
Name=Georgian

[Block.1100]
Name=Hangul jamo
Text=Hangul (Korean alphabet) comprises 51 letters ''(jamo)''. The block is much larger: the same letter at the beginning and end of a syllable is encoded with different characters, and the block has many obsolete jamo.\n\nChoseong are initial letters, jungseong are medial, and jongseong are final. The block’s design is simple: the distance between the original and medial letter, and between the medial and final is negative, and two or three letters written together automatically form a syllable.

[Block.1200]
Name=Ethiopic (Ge’ez)

[Block.1380]
Name=Ethiopic supplement
Text=Letters of Sebat Bet language {{nspk|sgw}}, and tone marks.

[Block.13A0]
Name=Cherokee

[Block.1400]
Name=Canadian Aboriginal syllabics

[Block.1680]
Name=Ogham

[Block.16A0]
Name=Runes

[Block.1700]
Name=Tagalog (Baybayin)

[Block.1720]
Name=Hanunó’o

[Block.1740]
Name=Buhid

[Block.1760]
Name=Tagbanwa

[Block.1780]
Name=Khmer

[Block.1800]
Name=Mongolian

[Block.18B0]
Name=Canadian Aboriginal syllabics extended
Text=Letters for Cree, Ojibwe ''(Algonquin)'', Carrier, Dene ''(Atabascan)''.

[Block.1900]
Name=Limbu

[Block.1950]
Name=Tai Le

[Block.1980]
Name=New Tai Lue

[Block.19E0]
Name=Khmer symbols
Text=The first character of block {{sm|᧠}} is the name of the 8th month in Buddhist solar-lunar calendar (Khmer ''Asat'' or ''Băthámsath'', Sanskrit ''Ashadha'', equivalent to June-July). To prevent lagging behind season changes, this month repeats twice every two or three years. Mark 17D3 {{sm|◌៓}} sometime was [[pt:deprecated|deprecated]] in favour of this character, and in Unicode{{_}}16 is still not{{_}}recommended.\n\nThe rest are the names of days in the lunar calendar from the new moon to full and back.

[Block.1A00]
Name=Buginese (Lontara)

[Block.1A20]
Name=Tai Tham (Lanna)

[Block.1AB0]
Name=Combining diacritical marks extended
Text=Used in German and Scottish dialectology.

[Block.1B00]
Name=Balinese

[Block.1B80]
Name=Sundanese

[Block.1BC0]
Name=Batak

[Block.1C00]
Name=Lepcha (Róng)

[Block.1C50]
Name=Ol Chiki

[Block.1C80]
Text=Variants of Cyrillic letters from printed church books: from Francysk Skaryna’s Bible (Prague, 1519, before Ivan Fyodorov) to Kyiv-Pechersk Typicon (1893).\n\nLigature ТЬ is from the new Khanty ''(Russia, 9500 as of 2010)'' alphabet of 2013.

[Block.1C90]
Name=Georgian extended
Text=''Mtavruli'' is a capital form of the standard Georgian type ''Mkhedruli''. Capital letters from [[pk:10A0|main block]] are named ''Asomtavruli'' and considered obsolete.\n\nMtavruli is used in highlights and captions, and for a long time was considered a variant of font. However, scholars found documents from the 19th and early 20th centuries where Mkhedruli and Mtavruli were mixed. Also, Georgian fonts come in pairs, Mkhedruli and Mtavruli, complicating daily work and making Georgian text less expressive if font change is impossible. Michael Everson, a typographer from Consortium, received a translation of ''Alice in Wonderland'' in 8-bit encoding where DRINK ME was typed in Mtavruli.\n\nNow Unicode considers Mkhedruli and Mtavruli as small and capital letters, just with other rules of use{{-}}the entire word is capitalized. The double line below barely visible on the icon is an editorial mark meaning capital letter.

[Block.1CC0]
Name=Sundanese supplement
Text=Historical punctuation marks for Sundanese.

[Block.1CD0]
Name=Vedic extensions
Text=Characters from Vedas used in [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]] and other Indic scripts. Pronunciation of those times greatly differed from modern, and they are mainly phonetical signs.\n\nPart of symbols vary from language to language. 1CF5 in Devanagari looks like an hourglass, in Bengali like a cross. 1CF6 in Devanagari looks like breve ˘, in Bengali{{-}}like upright or inverted small omega ω. Glyph looking like an upright omega over inverted one existed in Unicode for some time, and is more often found in research than in original sources.

[Block.1D00]
Name=Phonetic extensions
Text=Characters from Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, Old Irish phonetic notation, the Oxford English Dictionary, Americanist and Russianist phonetic notations.

[Block.1D80]
Name=Phonetic extensions supplement
Text=Specialized and obsolete forms of International Phonetic Alphabet.

[Block.1DC0]
Name=Combining diacritical marks supplement
Text=Characters of Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, medieval abbreviations and Teuthonista (system for writing German dialects).

[Block.1E00]
Name=Latin extended additional
Text=[[pt:precomposed|Precomposed]] characters with various marks. Ninety of them are Vietnamese, about dozen are medieval, including capital Eszett '''ẞ'''.

[Block.1F00]
Name=Greek extended
Text=Polytonical phonetics that existed in several dialects of Ancient Greek:\n* dasia{{-}}rough breathing (added ''h'');\n* psili{{-}}smooth breathing (absence of that ''h'');\n* iota subscript{{-}}diphtong with i;\n* oxia{{-}}high/rising pitch;\n* varia{{-}}normal/low pitch;\n* circumflex{{-}}change of tone in one syllable;\n* breve{{-}}short vowel if not{{_}}conveyed with alphabet, unlike ε/η and ο/ω;\n* macron{{-}}long vowel;\n* diaeresis{{-}}separare pronunciation of vowels.\n\nAdded in the beginning of common era, removed only in 1982 when such complex phonetics did{{_}}not{{_}}exist for many centuries.

[Block.2000]
Name=Punctuation — general
Text=Punctuation (Latin ''punctum'' “point”) is a system of marks that convey syntax and intonation of speech, and also rules of putting these marks in text.\n\nObviously, basic punctuation marks (period, comma, colon…) are encoded in [[pt:ascii|ASCII]] and [[pt:latin1|Latin-1]]. And punctuation blocks contain so-called ''typography marks'' for beautiful typesetting of text.

[Block.2070]
Name=Superscripts and subscripts
Text=The block contains superscript and subscript letters, signs and digits used in mathematics and phonetics.\n\nLong before the advent of the Internet, it became clear: mindless copying of text may lead to Avogadro number “equal” to 6.022×1023. System (text file, Internet forum…) may{{_}}not support superscripts, and there’s no sense in forcing people to move to other systems, or simulate like “6.022e23” or “6.022×10^23”.\n\nAlso, superscripts drawn by typographers are often better than synthesized by word processors.\n\nMany of important superscripts and subscripts are in other places: transposition of matrix Aᵀ{{-}}in the block of [[pk:1D40|phonetic extenstios]].

[Block.20A0]
Name=Currency symbols
Text=Currency characters fall into two clear categories. One group emerged in 17–19th century with evolution of business language: dollar {{sm|$}}, pound {{sm|£}}, [[ps:Taml|Tamil]] rupee sign {{sm|௹}}. Others are introduced by state since late 20th century: euro {{sm|€}}, hryvnia {{sm|₴}}, ruble {{sm|₽}}, rupee {{sm|₹}}.\n\nExpecting that the Russian ruble symbol would be accepted someday, Paratype company in 2009 filled the remainder of the block with it. The fonts of PT family proved good and spread across the Internet. So don’t be surprised if the new symbol of 2021 is “supported” with ₽ sign.

[Block.20D0]
Name=Combining diacritical marks for symbols
Text=Almost all of these characters work properly if the font has a [[pt:ligature|ligature]]{{-}}for example, {{sm| 1⃣}}. Author of ''Unicodia'' had to assemble all samples except three in font editor.

[Block.2100]
Name=Letterlike symbols
Text=Mathematical, technical and business symbols originated from letters.\n\nBlackboard bold {{sm|ℕℤℚℝℂ}} comes from bold written with chalk. Spread with prominent textbook on complex analysis of 1965 by Gunning and Rossi.\n\nCharacter {{sm|ℵ}} for cardinality of a set is introduced by Georg Cantor.

[Block.2150]
Name=Number forms
Text=Precomposed vulgar fractions and Roman numerals. Fraction {{sm|↉}} is used in baseball, {{sm|↊}} and {{sm|↋}}{{-}}in duodecimal numeral system.\n\nThree fractions are encoded in [[pt:latin1|Latin-1]].

[Block.2190]
Name=Arrows
Text=Arrows are characters used to indicate direction. Here are several uses for arrows:\n* for marking buttons;\n* on road signs, transport maps;\n* in mathematics{{-}}map, consequence, limit, vector, monotonic function;\n* in chemistry{{-}}reaction that goes in one or both directions, release of gas, precipitation.

[Block.2200]
Name=Mathematical operators
Text=Simplest mathematical signs: operators, comparison, integrals, set theory. System of mathematical notation emerged in centuries and differs by country, domain of mathematics and even by mathematical school. For example, circled plus {{smfunky|⊕}} may mean exclusive OR in formal logic, or machine addition in numerical methods. {{sm|≔}}, {{sm|≝}}, {{sm|≡}} are used for equality by definition.

[Block.2300]
Name=Technical miscellaneous
Text=Symbols used in technical drawing, electronics, programming, dentistry, poetry, chemistry, optics, user interfaces.\n\nAlso characters used in systems of computer mathematics like MathType (aka ''Microsoft Equation'') and TᴇX (pronounced “tech”) for building multiline brackets.

[Block.2400]
Name=Control pictures
Text=[[pt:control|Control]] characters by themselves have no graphic representation. This block gathers notations used to display control characters. The most important to us is character {{sm|␣}} meaning [[pt:space|space]].\n\nSeveral images of control characters are present in other blocks: {{sm|↵←⌫}}.

[Block.2440]
Name=Optical character recognition
Text=Optical and magnetic ink character recognition is used for automatic document entry, mostly passports, bank cheques, and transport tickets. Unlike barcodes, the same characters are recognized by both people and machines to diminish fraud. Both technologies use special monospace fonts. These fonts (sometimes in distorted form) are widely used in films and video games of the cyberpunk genre.\n\nIn 1956 the USA demonstrated magnetic ink character recognition (MICR). The system understands ten digits and four special characters identifying the field’s meaning. Magnetic recognition is significantly more reliable than optical. If you see a square font where part of the vertical strokes is thick (for example, on the box of ''Magnavox Odyssey'' console){{-}}this is stylized MICR.\n\nIn 1968 the USA made the first working technology of optical recognition, OCR-A. Understands the entire [[ps:Latn|Latin]] alphabet with small letters. To separate fields, special characters are used: hook, chair, fork, buckle and bowtie. The font is found in films ''13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi'', ''The Blacklist'', ''The Pretender'', ''Bugs'' and others.\n\nOnly in the 1990s font-independent optical recognition was developed. It is used for digitization of books and processing of questionnaires, and is much less reliable. So foreign passport with a machine-readable page written in OCR-B font is not{{_}}an{{_}}anachronism.

[Block.2460]
Name=Enclosed alphanumerics
Text=According to English Wikipedia, these characters are mainly used for lists{{-}}“half numbered, half bulleted”. {{em|Ⓜ}} is used as [[pt:emoji|emoji]] for metro/subway.

[Block.2500]
Name=Box drawing
Text=Elements of [[pt:pseudographics|pseudographics]] intended for box drawing. Like all pseudographics, they are mainly used with monospace fonts.\n\n[[po:Ibm]] compatibles had two types of lines, single and double. Unicode adds heavy, dotted and heavy dotted lines.\n\n''[[po:BbcMaster]]'' computer has rounded corners.

[Block.2580]
Name=Block elements
Text=Elements of [[pt:pseudographics|pseudographics]] used for solid fill. Like all pseudographics, they are mostly used in monospace fonts. In proportional fonts half fill {{sm|▀}}, shaded fill {{sm|░}} and other characters from IBM are usually vertically stretched, and quarter fill from ZX{{_}}Spectrum {{sm|▚}} is square. In this font{{-}}it’s open fint DejaVu abandoned in 2016{{-}}everything is right.\n\nPseudographics usually have no inter-character interval.\n\nPart of pseudographics from legacy computers, for example 2×3 blocks, are missing here and were [[pk:1FB00|added]] only in 2020.

[Block.25A0]
Name=Geometric shapes
Text=Geometric shapes are used for button marking, rough drawing of user interfaces. For instance, four buttons of ''Sony Playstation'' {{sm|🞩○△□}}{{-}}three of them are taken from this block. Character {{sm|◌}} is used in Unicode for showcasing [[pt:combining|combining]] marks.

[Block.2600]
Name=Symbols miscellaneous
Text=This block contains [[pt:emoji|emoji]], characters from astronomy, astrology, tabletop games, Eastern esoteric, religion, politics, and just for adorning printed text. Many characters are taken from Japanese encoding ARIB STD B24 used for broadcasting news, weather, traffic jams over digital television.

[Block.2700]
Name=Dingbats
Text=A well-known pre-computer library of printer’s decorations, ''Hermann Zapf dingbats'' (1977). Was widely distributed as PostScript fonts, and is guaranteed to exist in every PDF viewer. The block contains several VS16 [[pt:emoji|emoji]].\n\nOnly a few new emoji aren’t from that library: they were added in version 6.0 or later, and aren’t VS16.

[Block.27C0]
Text=Several characters used in geometry, formal logic, program verification, database theory, and other fields of mathematics. Also Western symbol of long division (former USSR primarily uses turned T or straight L).

[Block.27F0]
Text=Sixteen various mathematical and technical arrows, mainly circular and elongated.

[Block.2800]
Name=Braille patterns

[Block.2900]
Text=Intersecting arrows from theory of knots, harpoons, curved arrows, and other symbols.

[Block.2980]
Text=Various mathematical symbols: brackets, angles, empty sets, box-and-whiskers…

[Block.2A00]
Name=Mathematical operators supplemental
Text=Symbols from calculus, complex analysis, Z notation, database theory, control theory, formal logic and other fields of mathematics.

[Block.2B00]
Name=Symbols and arrows miscellaneous
Text=Arrows of different use, geometric shapes, characters from ''Wingdings'' and ''Webdings'' fonts, Japanese television symbols, astrological symbols, stars of ratings, chess comments.\n\n''Hellschreiber pause symbol'' was used in German telegraph machines.

[Block.2C00]
Name=Glagolitic

[Block.2C60]
Text=Characters of various small languages: Melpa and Nii ''(Papua New Guinea)'', Shona ''(Zimbabwe)'', Uyghur and others. Also seven letters of the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, and Claudian letter Ⱶ meaning the same as modern Y but designed for printing with existing stencils.

[Block.2C80]
Name=Coptic

[Block.2D00]
Name=Georgian supplement
Text=Obsolete [[pt:minuscule|minuscule]] Georgian type ''Nuskhuri''. Letters are slanted to the right and very boxy. Initials were typed in ''Asomtavruli'' from the main block.\n\nBack in 2000 Georgian State Department of Information Technology and Catholicos Patriarch (head of the Georgian church) asked to encode Nushkhuri, and the Consortium came forward.

[Block.2D30]
Name=Tifinagh (Berber)

[Block.2D80]
Name=Ethiopic extended
Text=Ethiopic script for languages:\n* Mekan: Nilo-Saharan family, {{nspk1|mym}}, in [[ps:Latn|Latin]] since 2009;\n* Blin (=Bilen): Cushitic family, {{nspk1|byn}}, in Latin since 1990s;\n* Bench: Omotic family, {{nspk1|bcq}}, in Latin since 2008;\n* Sebat Bet: Ethiosemitic branch, {{nspk1|sgw}}.

[Block.2DE0]
Text=Combining Cyrillic letters from Church Slavonic.

[Block.2E00]
Name=Punctuation — supplemental
Text=Special punctuation marks: textology of New Testament, characters from ancient Greek papyri, German dictinary marks, characters from Typicon (statute of Orthodox worship of 15th century) and more.

[Block.2E80]
Name=CJK radicals supplement
Text=Alternate forms of Kangxi radicals used as headers in dictionary indices.

[Block.2F00]
Name=Kangxi radicals
Text=You will ask: how to find a CJK ideograph in the dictionary if the pronunciation is unknown? To do this, you find a ''radical'' in an ideograph{{-}}a stroke or combination of strokes.\n\nKangxi dictionary of Chinese language is written 1710–1716 after the order of Kangxi Emperor of China, and contains {{n|49030}} entries. It was considered standard until late 19th century. In 1831 about {{n|2500}} mistakes were fixed, caused by the hurry of initial authors.\n\nThe system of “alphabetical” sorting of ideographs made from 214 radicals was devised back in 1615, but the Kangxi dictionary was the one that made it standard.

[Block.2FF0]
Name=Ideographic description characters
Text=Unicode has a mechanism for describing unencoded [[ps:Hani|CJK ideograph]]. To do this, you specify what parts it is split to and what’s inside each part. This block makes the first thing.\n\nAll characters are visible, renderers usually do{{_}}not{{_}}recreate ideograph’s look. Zhuang character U+2DA21 {{smb|𭨡}} can be described as {{sm|⿰書史}}. In Unicode{{_}}15.1 the block is filled completely, and one character is even allocated in [[pk:31C0|CJK strokes]].

[Block.3000]
Name=CJK symbols and punctuation
Text=Punctuation sings and other characters used in [[pt:cjk|CJK]]:\n* Ideograph-wide [[pt:space|space]].\n* CJK does{{_}}not{{_}}write the same ideograph twice in a row, and if need so{{-}}write iteration mark varying in horizontal and vertical text, ideographs and kana. (Chinese nowadays repeat in printed text, but still use iteration mark in writing.)\n* Some Japanese emblems.\n* Japanese brackets and quotes.\n* Ditto mark —//— widely used in our lists, just in ideographic form.\n\nIdeographic variation indicator 303E has no special meaning in Unicode, and was encoded for compatibility with two-byte GBK encoding used in China.

[Block.3040]
Name=Hiragana

[Block.30A0]
Name=Katakana

[Block.3100]
Name=Bopomofo (Zhuyin)

[Block.3130]
Name=Hangul compatibility jamo
Text=Characters for compatibility with Korean encoding KS{{_}}X{{_}}1001.

[Block.3190]
Name=Kanbun (hints to medieval Japanese)
Text=Kanbun (literally ''Han writing'') is a written language of medieval Japan based on [[ps:Hani|Chinese]]. Chinese say “subject-verb-object”, and Japanese do “subject-object-verb”, so text was{{_}}not{{_}}read in order of writing, and ''kaeriten'' marks were invented. These marks are usually smaller than ideographs.\n\nKanbun had other characters besides kaeriten: declension of words, punctuation marks, Japanese ''(kunyomi)'' reading of ideograph in contrast to Chinese ''(onyomi)''…\n\nDuring Meiji Modernization (late 19th century) Kanbun was abolished. It’s still taught in modern Japanese schools, but no{{_}}new texts are written.\n\nThis block contains one sign for merged reading and proper names (vertical line), and fifteen signs of reading order.

[Block.31A0]
Name=Bopomofo (Zhuyin) extended
Text=Phonetical characters for languages: South Min (Minnan), Hakka, Hmong languages and Cantonese.

[Block.31C0]
Name=CJK strokes
Text=[[pt:cjk|CJK]] ideographs consist of eight basic elements:\n\n* dot D;\n* hook G;\n* horizontal line H;\n* falling rightwards line ''(press)'' N;\n* falling leftwards line ''(throw)'' P;\n* vertical line S;\n* upward horizontal line T;\n* clockwise curve W.\n\nAmong supplementary elements: flat part B, circle Q, slant X, break Z. For every stroke it’s codified in what direction it must be written.\n\nAll names are Chinese: for example, B from ''biǎn'' “flat”.

[Block.31F0]
Name=Katakana phonetic extensions
Text=Small Katakana characters for conveying phonemes of Ainu languages.

[Block.3200]
Name=Enclosed CJK letters and months
Text=[[ps:Kana|Katakana]], [[ps:Hang|Hangul]] and [[ps:Hani|ideographs]] enclosed in brackets and circles.\n\nAlso several characters that should have been in other blocks: abbreviations of measuring units, digits 21 to 50 in circles, speed limit signs (10…80 in circles and squares).\n\nIn 2019 Reiwa sign was added{{-}}ideograph for reign of new Emperor Naruhito.

[Block.3300]
Name=CJK compatibility
Text=Characters for compatibility with [[pt:cjk|CJK]] encodings. Various Japanese abbreviations (apartment, alpha, ampere, are=100{{_}}m²…), telegraph symbols, eras of Japanese emperors’ reign, measurement units fitting into CJK squares.

[Block.3400]
Text={{n|6582}} rare [[ps:Hani|Chinese ideographs]]. In 2020 ten more were added, filling the block completely.\n\nThe first of ideographs means “hill, mound, grave”, and currently replaced with character {{sm|丘}}. The second is an obsolete ideograph that means in different sources “lick”, “woven mat”, “bamboo sheath”, “unilluminated”.

[Block.4DC0]
Name=Yijing hexagram symbols
Text=Book of Changes (Yi Jing or I Ching) is a Chinese esoterical text written by several generations. The oldest part was written about 700{{_}}BC and describes a well-known method of cleromancy, divination using random numbers. One must random a hexagram and read its meaning.\n\nIt is known that divination used a bundle of 50 sticks, traditionally stalks of yarrow, but it’s unknown how exactly. Methods with coin flipping appeared later, and modern divination using sticks is a reconstruction.\n\nHexagrams are encoded in the same order as in the book: you take its number 1…64, add offset 4DBF₁₆=19903₁₀, and get a Unicode point.\n\nThere was also a philosopher named Yijing in China, unrelated to the book.

[Block.4E00]
Name=CJK unified ideographs

[Block.A000]
Name=Yi syllables

[Block.A490]
Name=Yi radicals
Text=Radicals used for “alphabetical sorting” of Yi dictionaries.

[Block.A4D0]
Name=Lisu (Fraser alphabet)

[Block.A500]
Name=Vai

[Block.A640]
Text=Old and Church Slavonic, pre-1917 Abkhazian (Uslar Cyrillic, 1862), intonation sign for Lithuanian dialectology.\n\nRare [[pt:ligature|ligature]] “multiocular O” is used only in the church epithet “many-eyed” (мног{{funky|ꙮ}}кий). In Unicode{{_}}15 seven eyes were replaced with ten{{-}}it’s hard to count how many are in initial manuscripts, but closer to ten.

[Block.A6A0]
Name=Bamum

[Block.A700]
Name=Modifier tone letters
Text=Characters of International Phonetic Alphabet used in Chinese, Chinantec ''(natives of Mexico)'' and African languages to convey tone{{-}}change of pitch within a single phoneme.\n\nCharacters {{sm|꜀꜁}} and others are used in etymological analysis of Chinese tones.\n\n{{sm|꜈꜉}} and others{{-}}for direct specification of pitch and ''tone sandhi''. (''Sandhi'' is a Sanskrit term meaning change of phoneme depending on surrounding phonemes. For example, English <nobr>syn- + pathy = sy'''m'''pathy</nobr>{{-}}but this sandhi is{{_}}not{{_}}tone, English does{{_}}not have tones.)\n\n{{sm|ꜗꜘꜙꜚ}} are used in Chinantec.\n\nArrows are used for ''tone steps'' (the next syllable has lower or higher tone). Exclamation marks are a frequent surrogate that was used before wide IPA support in fonts.

[Block.A720]
Text=Letters from Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, from medieval transcription and notation systems, ancillary Mayan letters used during colonial period, and others.

[Block.A800]
Name=Syloti Nagri

[Block.A830]
Name=Common Indic number forms
Text=Such characters are found in sources of 16th century, and are used even today in North India, Pakistan and Nepal for writing fractions of size, weight or price.

[Block.A840]
Name=Phags-Pa (Mongolian square)

[Block.A880]
Name=Saurashtra

[Block.A8E0]
Name=Devanagari extended
Text=Chanting from Samaveda (book of religious songs), variants of ''candrabindu'' sign (nasal vowel), editorial marks, religious symbols, vowel “ay” invented by Europeans for small non-written languages of India.

[Block.A900]
Name=Kayah Li

[Block.A930]
Name=Rejang

[Block.A960]
Name=Hangul jamo extended A
Text=Initial ''(choseong)'' old consonants of the Korean language. They are used to dynamically make syllables that are absent in modern Korean{{-}}and thus absent in [[pt:precomposed|precomposed]] form.

[Block.A980]
Name=Javanese

[Block.A9E0]
Text=Letters and digits for languages: Pali ''(liturgic in Buddhism)'' and Red Tai ''(Myanmar, 100k as of 2010)''.

[Block.AA00]
Name=Cham

[Block.AA60]
Text=Letter for Khamti ''(Myanmar, India, 13k as of 2007)'' and Tai-Aiton ''(Assam, 1500 people as of 2006)''.

[Block.AA80]
Name=Tai Viet

[Block.AAE0]
Name=Meetei Mayek extensions
Text=Obsolete characters from Meetei language, including [[pt:virama|virama]] for assembling old [[pt:ligature|ligatures]].

[Block.AB00]
Name=Ethiopic extended A
Text=Letters for languages:\n* Gamo-Gofa-Dawro: three ethnic groups, one language, {{nspk1|gof}};\n* Basketo: {{nspk1|bst}};\n* Gumuz: {{nspk1|guk}}, in [[ps:Latn|Latin]] since 2007.

[Block.AB30]
Text=Letters used in German and Scottish dialectology, transcription of Native American and Sino-Tibetan languages, and in Latin writing of Yakut (Novgorodov alphabet, 1920–1929).

[Block.AB70]
Name=Cherokee supplement
Text=This block contains small Cherokee letters, except six encoded in the main block.

[Block.ABC0]
Name=Meetei Mayek (Manipuri)

[Block.AC00]
Name=Hangul syllables
Text=[[pt:precomposed|Precomposed]] Hangul syllables, mainly for compatibility with other encodings.\n\nAdding Korean to Unicode was hard. In Unicode{{_}}1.0 the block was in 3400…3D2D ([[ps:Hani|Han ideographs]] are there now). In Unicode{{_}}2.0 (1996) the block was put to the final place in the hope that there’s still not{{_}}much Korean Unicode text. This case was dubbed “the great Korean mess”. In response Consortium made the main [[pt:stability|stability]] guarantee: not{{_}}a{{_}}single character will move or disappear.

[Block.D7B0]
Name=Hangul jamo extended B
Text=Old medial and final ''(jungseong and jongseong)'' letters of Korean. They permit dynamic composition of syllables absent in modern Korean{{-}}and thus absent in [[pt:precomposed|precomposed]] form.

[Block.F900]
Name=CJK compatibility ideographs
Text=The block contains [[ps:Hani|CJK ideographs]] that are present in other encodings several times, to prevent information loss during [[pt:convertibility|round-trip conversion]]. Their shape is strictly specified. However, ordinary [[pt:unification|unified]] ideographs are found here too{{-}}for example, FA0E and 0F, 11, 13, 14…

[Block.FB00]
Name=Alphabetic presentation forms
Text=Standard [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] for [[ps:Latn|Latin]], [[ps:Armn|Armenian]] and [[ps:Hebr|Hebrew]].

[Block.FB50]
Name=Arabic presentation forms A
Text={{ArabPres1}}\n\n32 positions FDDx and FDEx are [[pt:noncharacter|non-characters]].\n\nAlso contains [[pt:spacing|spacing]] vowel marks.\n\n{{ArabPres2}}

[Block.FE00]
Name=Variation selectors
Text=Very often (for example, in browsers) one or another variation of character is chosen by selecting another font, or by enabling OpenType features. Unicode permits another method: creating ligature from character and selector.\n\n[[ps:Latn|Latin]], [[ps:Mymr|Myanmar]] and some more scrtips use VS1. [[ps:Hani|CJK ideographs]] use VS1 to VS3. [[pt:emoji|Emoji]] can be made coloured (VS16) or text (VS15).

[Block.FE10]
Name=Vertical forms
Text=[[ps:Hani|Chinese]] was initially written right to left in columns, and it’s still written this way for artistic purposes: poems, postcards, signs.\n\nThe block encodes characters from Chinese encoding GB{{_}}18030 (2000) intended for vertical writing.

[Block.FE20]
Name=Combining half marks
Text=Parts of diacritical marks spanning several characters. For example, you can cover three letters {{sm|a︤c︦e︥}} with a single line. It’s poorly implemented in most fonts, and the author of ''Unicodia'' intentionally picked three good letters. And Church Slavonic {{sm|Х︮с︯}} looks bad.

[Block.FE30]
Name=CJK compatibility forms
Text=Characters for vertical [[pt:cjk|CJK]] writing, mostly for compatibility with existing encodings. Particularly with Chinese encoding CNS{{_}}11643{{-}}hence name in Unicode 1.0, ''CNS 11643 Compatibility''.

[Block.FE50]
Name=Small form variants
Text=Small punctuation marks for compatibility with Chinese encoding CNS{{_}}11643.

[Block.FE70]
Name=Arabic presentation forms B
Text={{ArabPres1}}\n\nContains character FEFF [[pt:bom|Byte Order Mark]].\n\n{{ArabPres2}}

[Block.FF00]
Name=Halfwidth and fullwidth forms
Text=In CJK an ideograph traditionally takes the entire cell of the grid, and a European letter takes half of the cell. Hence the funny style of text on cheap Chinese goods with badly picked fonts: on the Russian internet “Athletism” insoles became famous.\n\nThis block contains “wrong” characters that take half of a cell instead of the full one, and vice-versa.

[Block.FFF0]
Name=Specials
Text=A short block at the end of [[pt:bmp|Basic Plane]]. From 14 characters (two are [[pt:noncharacter|non-characters]]) only five are assigned: three characters of interlinear annotations, substitution character in a composite document (“picture here”), and sign of failed reading.\n\nThe latter, {{sm|�}}, we see most of all. It means that “mojibake” appeared not{{_}}because of a missing glyph in the font, but because of failed decoding. Usually{{-}}someone attempted to read the text in single-byte encoding as [[pt:utf8|UTF-8]].

[Block.10000]
Name=Linear B syllabary

[Block.10080]
Name=Linear B ideograms

[Block.10100]
Name=Aegean numbers
Text=Very simple decimal numeral system used by Minoan and Crete-Mycenaean civilizations. Found in Linear [[ps:Lina|A]] and [[ps:Linb|B]] scripts. In [[ps:Cprt|Cypriot]] syllabary one tablet with number 100 was found.

[Block.10140]
Name=Ancient Greek numbers
Text=Attic numeral system was [[pt:acrophonic|acrophonic]]{{-}}first letters of words were used for digits:\n* I = 1, ἴος\n* trimmed Π = 5, πέντε\n* Δ = 10, δέκα\n* Η = 100, ηἑκατόν\n* Χ = {{n|1000}}, χίλιοι\n* Μ = {{n|10000}}, μύριοι\n\nCharacters consisting of Π and 10/100/{{n|1000}}… were used for 50, 500 etc.\n\nLater Attic system was supplanted with [[ps:Grek|Ionian]] (Α=1, Β=2, …, Ι=10, Κ=20, …, Ρ=100, Σ=200…), but cultural interchange influenced Etruscans, and that led to Roman numerals.\n\nThis block also contains symbols of Ancient Greek measuring units.\n\nThe funny word ''Litra'' (used by Russian alcoholics for one-litre bottle) is actually related to litre. In Ancient Greece ''litra'' was a coin and unit of weight. In France ''litron'' was a measure of dry volume, hence ''litre''.

[Block.10190]
Name=Ancient symbols
Text=Roman symbols for money, weights and measures. Also Greek abbreviation “cross” (less often “Christ”).

[Block.101D0]
Name=Phaistos Disc
Text=Phaistos Disc is an artifact of Crete-Minoan (proto-Greek) culture. Disc made of clay without a pottery wheel was found in 1908 in Crete, is 160{{_}}mm in diameter and 20{{_}}mm in thickness. Dated 2100–1100{{_}}BC and contains two inscriptions made in a spiral with unknown script using stamps. Exhibited in Heraklion Archaeological Museum (Crete).\n\nThe hypothesis that text is read from edge to center (right-to-left) is generally accepted. Many characters are mirrored for writing left-to-right: well, originally PEDESTRIAN walks to the right. Nobody knows whether it is Cretan script and what type it belongs to. Among unusual hypotheses: forgery done by the artist who worked at excavations, a list of the Cretan king’s territories, and a race game.\n\nIn 2002 Phaistos Disc was proposed to [[pt:private|ConScript Unicode Registry]] into E6D0–E6FF; the character order is the same (numbered by Arthur Evans, 1905). Withdrawn after inclusion of Phaistos Disc in actual Unicode. Two characters from Registry did{{_}}not{{_}}come into Unicode and taken from Latin: | and ¦. Character names are as given by Louis Godart (1995).

[Block.10280]
Name=Lycian

[Block.102A0]
Name=Carian

[Block.102E0]
Name=Coptic epact numbers
Text=''Epact'' word (Greek ἐπακτός) here means “borrowed”, not{{_}}equations for conversions from the solar calendar to lunar or for determining the date of Easter. Indeed, these numbers, descendants of normal [[ps:Copt|Coptic]] notation borrowed from [[ps:Grek|Greek]], were widely used in the Coptic-Arabic world 10th to 19th century, particularly in astronomy tables ≈1800. Written left-to-right.\n\nBecause of such non-standard use, these numbers are encoded as a separate block, not{{_}}as a{{_}}variant of Coptic.\n\nIn character samples you’ll see a gross difference with Unicode tables: ''Anshuman Pandey'', expert in ancient scripts, traced old ink symbols, and ''Google Noto'' project attempted to repeat them with lines of constant width.

[Block.10300]
Name=Italic old (Etruscan)

[Block.10330]
Name=Gothic

[Block.10350]
Name=Permic old (Anbur)

[Block.10380]
Name=Ugaritic

[Block.103A0]
Name=Persian old

[Block.10400]
Name=Deseret (Mormon)

[Block.10450]
Name=Shavian

[Block.10480]
Name=Osmanya (Somali)

[Block.104B0]
Name=Osage

[Block.10500]
Name=Albanian — Elbasan Gospel

[Block.10530]
Name=Caucasian Albanian (Aghwank)

[Block.10570]
Name=Albanian — Vithkuqi

[Block.105C0]
Name=Albanian — Todhri

[Block.10600]
Name=Linear A

[Block.10780]
Text=Modifier AA is from Voice Quality Symbols used to transcribe speech disorders. The rest are from phonetics, and mean phonemes pronounced incompletely.

[Block.10800]
Name=Cypriot syllabary

[Block.10840]
Name=Imperial Aramaic

[Block.10860]
Name=Palmyrene

[Block.10880]
Name=Nabataean

[Block.108E0]
Name=Hatran (Ashurian)

[Block.10900]
Name=Phoenician

[Block.10920]
Name=Lydian (Sardian)

[Block.10940]
Name=Sidetic

[Block.10980]
Name=Meroitic hieroglyphs

[Block.109A0]
Name=Meroitic cursive

[Block.10A00]
Name=Kharoshthi

[Block.10A60]
Name=Arabian old south

[Block.10A80]
Name=Arabian old north

[Block.10AC0]
Name=Manichaean

[Block.10B00]
Name=Avestan

[Block.10B40]
Name=Parthian — inscriptional

[Block.10B60]
Name=Pahlavi — inscriptional

[Block.10B80]
Name=Pahlavi — Psalter

[Block.10C00]
Name=Turkic old (Orkhon-Yenisei) runes

[Block.10C80]
Name=Hungarian old (Székely) runes

[Block.10D00]
Name=Hanifi Rohingya

[Block.10D40]
Name=Garay

[Block.10E60]
Name=Rumi numeral symbols
Text=Numbers that were used in Arabic Africa from the 10th to 17th century, especially in Fez ''(Morocco)''.

[Block.10E80]
Name=Yezidi

[Block.10EC0]
Text=Characters from Turkish and Libyan Quran, and rare variations of Pegon (writing [[ps:Java|Javanese]] with Arabic letters).

[Block.10F00]
Name=Sogdian old

[Block.10F30]
Name=Sogdian

[Block.10F70]
Name=Uyghur old

[Block.10FB0]
Name=Chorasmian

[Block.10FE0]
Name=Elymaic

[Block.11000]
Name=Brahmi

[Block.11080]
Name=Kaithi

[Block.110D0]
Name=Sora Sompeng

[Block.11100]
Name=Chakma

[Block.11150]
Name=Mahajani

[Block.11180]
Name=Sharada

[Block.111E0]
Name=Sinhala archaic numbers
Text=The old non-positional number system used in Sri Lanka up to the early 19th century.

[Block.11200]
Name=Khojki

[Block.11280]
Name=Multani

[Block.112B0]
Name=Khudawadi (Sindhi)

[Block.11300]
Name=Grantha

[Block.11380]
Name=Tulu-Tigalari

[Block.11400]
Name=Newa (Prachalit)

[Block.11480]
Name=Tirhuta (Maithili, Mithilakshar)

[Block.11580]
Name=Siddham (Bonji)

[Block.11600]
Name=Modi

[Block.11660]
Name=Mongolian supplement
Text=Birga character that leaked to Mongolian from [[ps:Tibt|Tibetan]] and used as initial. Mongolian is written top-down, and Tibetan is left-to-right, so it’s impossible to use Tibetan ''yig-mgo''.\n\nUnicode was generous to give real code points, not{{_}}variants of writing{{-}}but in ancillary plane, not{{_}}[[pt:bmp|Base]].\n\nIcon corresponds to top-down writing, and [[pt:character|glyphs]] in fonts are turned 90° anticlockwise.

[Block.11680]
Name=Takri

[Block.116D0]
Text=Two sets of digits gaining popularity among minorities.

[Block.11700]
Name=Ahom

[Block.11800]
Name=Dogra

[Block.118A0]
Name=Warang Citi

[Block.11900]
Name=Dives Akuru (ancient Maldivian)

[Block.119A0]
Name=Nandinagari

[Block.11A00]
Name=Zanabazar square (Mongolian horizontal square)

[Block.11A50]
Name=Soyombo

[Block.11AB0]
Name=Canadian Aboriginal syllabics extended A
Text=Twelve syllables of Inuit (Eskimo) people of Nattilik (literally ''people of seal''), and four historical syllables of Cree and Ojibwe.

[Block.11AC0]
Name=Pau Cin Hau

[Block.11B00]
Name=Devanagari extended A
Text=Jain punctuation and [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] for phrased like “may it be blessed”.

[Block.11B60]
Name=Sharada supplement
Text=Vowel marks of modern Sharada for Kashmiri, adapted from [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]]. To get initial letters, these marks are attached to U+11183 or other initial vowel. Kashmiri is usually written in [[ps:Arab|Arabic-Urdu]].

[Block.11BC0]
Name=Sunuwar

[Block.11C00]
Name=Bhaiksuki (arrowhead script)

[Block.11C70]
Name=Marchen

[Block.11D00]
Name=Gondi — Masaram script

[Block.11D60]
Name=Gondi — Gunjala

[Block.11DB0]
Name=Tolong Siki

[Block.11EE0]
Name=Makasar (bird script)

[Block.11F00]
Name=Kawi (old Javanese)

[Block.11FB0]
Name=Lisu supplement
Text=One character from Naxi language (South-East China, 300K, safe).

[Block.11FC0]
Name=Tamil supplement
Text=Old Tamil fractions and other characters{{-}}for currencies, agriculture, accounting.

[Block.12000]
Name=Cuneiform

[Block.12400]
Name=Cuneiform numbers and punctuation
Text=Babylonians about 2000{{_}}BC devised the first positional number system, it was 60-based. {{sm|𒐕}} is a unit from 0 to 9, {{sm|𒌋}} is ten from 0 to 5. Zero {{sm|𒑊}} was written only between positions, not{{_}}at the end of the number, number’s order is deducible only from context.\n\nBefore that, a non-positional system was used, when different objects and different positions were written with different signs.

[Block.12480]
Name=Early dynastic cuneiform

[Block.12F90]
Name=Cypro-Minoan

[Block.13000]
Name=Egyptian hieroglyphs

[Block.13430]
Name=Egyptian hieroglyph format controls
Text=Sixteen characters provide complete formatting of Egyptian hieroglyphs. They need a special layout engine.\n\nHorizontal mirroring mark may be implemented either in an engine or in a font.\n\nTwo non-break hieroglyphic spaces and four fills for completely destroyed surfaces are simple characters.\n\nFifteen hatches for heavily damaged hieroglyphs should ideally adapt to hieroglyphs’ actual width and height.

[Block.13460]
Name=Egyptian hieroglyphs extended A
Text=3995 more hieroglyphs from sources other than Alan Gardiner. The first proposals were so bad that a man with a laptop somehow slipped in, but scholars checked everything, and that led to ''Unikemet'', Unicode’s base of Egyptian hieroglyphs. (''Kemet'' is the autonym of ancient Egypt.)\n\nEgyptologists developed special arrows for reading direction, U+1F8C0 and C1.\n\nIn early 2025, [[pt:egyp|rules for encoding]] hieroglyphs were written.

[Block.14400]
Name=Anatolian (Luwian) heroglyphs

[Block.16100]
Name=Gurung Khema

[Block.16D40]
Name=Kirat Rai

[Block.16800]
Name=Bamum supplement
Text=Early phases of [[ps:Bamu|Bamum]] A to F, both ideographic and syllabic. Final syllabic phase G is in [[pt:bmp|Basic Plane]].

[Block.16A40]
Name=Mro

[Block.16A70]
Name=Tangsa

[Block.16AD0]
Name=Bassa Vah

[Block.16B00]
Name=Pahawh Hmong

[Block.16D80]
Name=Chisoi

[Block.16E40]
Name=Medefaidrin (Obɛri Ɔkaimɛ)

[Block.16EA0]
Name=Beria Erfe

[Block.16F00]
Name=Miao (Pollard script)

[Block.16FE0]
Name=Ideographic symbols and punctuation
Text=Various characters used in old [[pt:cjk|CJK]] scripts: [[ps:Nshu|Nüshu]], [[ps:Tang|Tangut]], [[ps:Kits|Khitan small]], old [[ps:Hani|Chinese ideographs]].\n\nIdentical ideograph is{{_}}not{{_}}written twice in a row, iteration mark is written instead. In modern printed Chinese iteration is allowed, Chinese informally and Japanese use {{sm|々}} U+3005.\n\nHook means the end of a sentence or section in old manuscripts.\n\nIf a block of Khitan Small starts with a single ideograph instead of two, a filler is put in the vacant place.\n\nWhile Vietnam wrote with ideographs, two characters were used to convey local pronunciation. Both have two variants that never occur in a single text and thus [[pt:unification|unified]]. The second form looks like arrow <big>↑</big> and lightning <big>ϟ</big> respectively.

[Block.17000]
Name=Tangut

[Block.18800]
Name=Tangut components
Text=Components and radicals used in modern studying of Tangut script.

[Block.18B00]
Name=Khitan small script

[Block.18D00]
Name=Tangut supplement
Text=Nine characters were [[pt:unification|disunified]] in 2020. In other words: all nine are someone’s homographs. For example, ''pair'' was left on the same place 17134, and homograph ''foolish'' got a new number 18D00.\n\nA Tangut dictionary came in 2021 in China, boosting encoding new ideographs.

[Block.18D80]
Name=Tangut components supplement
Text=Components and radicals from the new dictionary (2021).

[Block.1AFF0]
Text=Writing of Taiwanese dialect of Southern Min language with kana. Invented by Japanese linguists before World War 2.

[Block.1B000]
Name=Kana supplement
Text=One obsolete character of [[ps:Kana|Katakana]] and 255 characters of [[ps:Hent|Hentaigana]] (old [[ps:Hira|Hiragana]]). Hentaigana is continued in the next block.

[Block.1B100]
Text=31 characters of [[ps:Hent|Hentaigana]] (old [[ps:Hira|Hiragana]]), and 4 characters of [[ps:Kana|Katakana]] and Hiragana.

[Block.1B130]
Name=Small kana extension
Text=Small [[ps:Kana|Katakana]] characters convey phonemes missing in Japanese. For example, small {{sm|ケヰ}} is for labialized {{t|kʷi}}. Also, corresponding characters of [[ps:Hira|Hiragana]] are added.

[Block.1B170]
Name=Nüshu

[Block.1BC00]
Name=Duployan shorthand

[Block.1BCA0]
Name=Shorthand format controls
Text=[[pt:ignorable|Invisible]] characters used for Romanian and Chinook ''(Natives Americans, North-West USA)'' shorthand.

[Block.1CC00]
Name=Symbols for legacy computing supplement
Text=The final bit of symbols from old computers. Rare [[pt:pseudographics|pseudographics]], game sprites (some of those computers had no graphics), big letters spanning multiple [[pt:mono|character cells]]… There probably will be no more big additions of such symbols, as microcomputers of the 2010s tend to stick to standard encodings.\n\nUnicode{{_}}17 [[pt:unification|disunified]] console symbols from [[pt:emoji|emoji]].

[Block.1CEC0]
Name=Symbols miscellaneous supplement
Text=Asteroid signs are from astronomy of the 19th century, when people started to discover them. Modern astronomers do not use these signs.\n\nArabic geomancy (actually divination using random numbers, like [[pk:4DC0|Yijing]]) involved drawing random figures on the sand.\n\nCircle with a bar (in superscripted form) in modern chemistry means “standard” (convenient for calculations) state of mixture when its composition depends on temperature and pressure.

[Block.1CF00]
Name=Znamenny musical notation
Text=Znamenny chant (banner chant) or Kryuk chant (hook chant) is monophonic (the entire choir sings in unison) Orthodox chant. Named after ''banners''{{-}}musical signs accompanied with ''priznaks'' (marks). Initially, marks were written in red; Alexander Mezenets (17th century) invented a system of marks that does{{_}}not{{_}}need cinnabar. Unlike European notes that are encoded first of all to simplify programmers’ life and convey just rhythm in [[pt:plaintext|plain text]], Znamenny encoding is completely functional.\n\nBanners convey a figure that is sung (up to 10 notes), and the pitch is specified with marks.\n\nThe earliest Znamenny scores are dated to 11th century. During the church reform (“schism”) of 17th century banners were replaced with Kievan notation (“axes”). Until 19th century it was gradually supplanted with polyphonic chant that’s present in churches nowadays. And Znamenny chant and monophony became a feature of Old Believers.\n\nThere are several types of chant: Kondak (type of church song), Stolp (pole), Put (way), and Demestvo (origin unclear, maybe from Latin ''domesticus''). The last one features elements of polyphony.\n\nThere are modern attempts to revive the Znamenny chant. Dvoyeznamenniki (double-banners), scores written with both banners and notes, gave the key to understanding Znamenny notation. It was brought to Unicode by the Ponomar project that draws fonts, builds Church Slavonic spelling and recognition dictionaries, and digitizes books.

[Block.1D000]
Name=Byzantine musical symbols
Text=Little is known about Byzantine church music, and nothing at all about secular. Nevertheless, symbols of Byzantine origin were used by the Orthodox at least until the 19th century, even under the rule of Turkey, and were reformed about 1800.

[Block.1D100]
Name=Musical symbols
Text=Notes looking like modern appeared in the 10th century. Those notes were square because they were drawn with a thick pen. Four lines per staff were drawn for singers, and more for instruments. There were no absolute frequencies. By the 13th century length marks were invented. Round notes appeared in an attempt to cursively draw a note with a pen of medium thickness. Even today special fountain pens for musicians are produced.\n\nNotes evolved to their current form in the 17th century with equal temperament which made possible porting music to other instruments, playing in orchestras.\n\nMusic is [[pt:universality|non-text]] information and thus is outside scope of Unicode. But it’s tempting to use existing typography engines for storing notes and their parts in fonts to simplify music software, and shorten sheet PDFs. In this light the purpose of eight [[pt:format|format]] characters (beam, tie, slur, phrase) is unclear. In 2013 open standard SMuFL ''(Standard Music Font Layout)'' came, it extended the block to 2600 characters using [[pt:private|private-use]] codepoints.\n\nMicrotone notation initially accepted by Unicode (1D132 and 33) wasn’t widely used, few have seen these characters “in the wild”. Unicode{{_}}17 will add another notation (half-sharp, half-flat) widely used by musical software.\n\nAlso, this block has several characters from obsolete musical notations.

[Block.1D200]
Name=Ancient Greek musical notation
Text=Little is known about ancient Greeks. Initially they had five notes per octave, compensating such a shortage with various methods of instrument tuning, but later they got to halftones, sometimes even using quarter-tones. The main instruments were aulos (two pipes played simultaneously) and lyre.\n\nThere were different notations for musicians and singers, it allowed parallel writing of lyrics, music and hints for singers. Notes were written with letters, and characters that differ from normal Greek letters are gathered in this block without any system.

[Block.1D2C0]
Name=Kaktovik numerals
Text=Positional base-20 numerals invented in 1980s by Inuit (Eskimo) schoolchildren from town of Kaktovik, Alaska. Inuits count in twenties <nobr>(74 = 3×20 + 15 − 1)</nobr>, and before the introduction of this system, they were among the worst in mathematics across all USA, after{{-}}a little above average, like bilingual people are often better in linguistics.\n\nA base-20 abacus was designed. It looks like Japanese ''soroban'', but there are three “heavenly” beads. As in Japan, the bead is “off” if it’s near the edge, and “on” if near the middle wall. There are simple algorithms for conversion from base-20 to decimal.\n\nThere is no special character for fractional part (“vigesimal point”). Sometimes middle dot is used.

[Block.1D2E0]
Name=Mayan numerals
Text=Maya used a base-20 positional numeral system. Digits were written top-down. Sometimes face of the corresponding god was drawn instead of a digit. By common opinion, positional counting and zero were invented before Maya (maybe by Olmecs) before the common era. Shells, rods and dots tell that such numerals originate from counting boards.\n\nSome sources state that in everyday life Maya used simpler non-positional numerals.

[Block.1D300]
Name=Tai Xuan Jing symbols
Text=Tài Xuán Jīng (Canon of Supreme Mystery) is a Chinese divination book of 2{{_}}CE inspired with [[pk:4DC0|Yi Jing]]. The book employs 81 tetragrams. Each line comes in three styles: solid (天 tiān = heaven), broken once (地 dì = earth) and broken twice (人 rén = human). One should random a number four times, get a tetragram and read its meaning in the book.\n\nUnicode Consortium confused earth and human. With [[pt:stability|stability]] guarantees the only thing remaining is to explain this evil mistake in comments.\n\nSome monograms and digrams are already present in Base Plane.

[Block.1D360]
Name=Counting rod numerals
Text=Counting rods are an excellent tool for teaching counting to children. Old Chinese used a true positional system made of rods laid on a counting board, starting from the Warring States (5th century{{_}}BC) until the 16th century. There was a notation for fractions and even for negative numbers (with rods of another colour).\n\nVertical rods mean units, hundreds, tens of thousands…, horizontal{{-}}tens, thousands, hundreds of thousands… Sometimes vice-versa{{-}}in such a form the rods came into Unicode. Symbols of counting rods are sometimes written on paper.\n\nIf you need to count something and memorize the number, tally marks are used. European fives {{sm|𝍸}} are often associated with prison. Chinese use ideograph <font size='+1'>正</font>. Foresters count in tens, both in America and in the former USSR (seen in a book by Ya.I.{{_}}Perelman), but this method did{{_}}not{{_}}enter Unicode.

[Block.1D400]
Name=Mathematical alphanumeric symbols
Text=Mathematicians mark various objects with different fonts:\n* vectors in bold, scalars in italic: {{sm|𝐅=𝑚𝐚}};\n* special sets{{-}}in bold or double-struck: {{sm|ℕ}} for the set of natural numbers 1, 2, 3…;\n* spaces{{-}}in handwritten: {{sm|𝒰}} for universal set;\n* set cardinalities{{-}}in Fraktur: {{sm|𝔠}} for continuum;\n* different definitions of the same object{{-}}in handwritten or Fraktur: Heine limit {{sm|ℋlim}} and Cauchy limit {{sm|𝒞lim}};\n* functions{{-}}in different fonts: expected value {{sm|𝖤ξ}} is often sans-serif;\n* constants{{-}}in bold or double-struck: limits of lattice {{sm|𝟘}} and {{sm|𝟙}}, imaginary units {{sm|𝕚𝕛𝕜}}…\n\nDouble-struck font {{sm|ℕℤℚℝℂ}} comes from bold written with chalk. It spread widely with the textbook on complex analysis by Gunning and Rossi (1965).\n\nThe most widespread of such notations are already in the [[pt:bmp|Base Plane]], in the block of [[pk:2100|letterlike symbols]]. With the extension of Unicode beyond Base Plane, the complete Latin alphabet and digits written with various fonts were added.\n\nSome Fraktur letters are barely recognizable. Both Unicode charts and most fonts, including Windows and TᴇX, are designed this way, though some mathematicians, especially in non-[[ps:Latn|Latin]] countries, use simpler fonts.

[Block.1D800]
Name=Sutton SignWriting

[Block.1DF00]
Text=Various characters for speech disorders and phonetics: palatal and retroflex phonemes, clicks and others.

[Block.1E000]
Name=Glagolitic supplement
Text=Superscript Glagolitic letters attested in some sources.\n\nThese letters are rarely attested in round Bulgarian-style Glagolitsa (more seldom than in [[ps:Cyrl|Cyrillic]]), and almost never in square Croatian-style.

[Block.1E030]
Text=Modifier letters for writing transcription with Cyrillic letters. Such notation is widespread in schools and institutes across all former USSR.

[Block.1E100]
Name=Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong (Chervang alphabet)

[Block.1E290]
Name=Toto

[Block.1E2C0]
Name=Wancho

[Block.1E4D0]
Name=Nag alphabet (Mundari)

[Block.1E5D0]
Name=Ol Onal

[Block.1E6C0]
Name=Tai Yo

[Block.1E7E0]
Name=Ethiopic extended B
Text=New orthography of Gurage languages (Ethio-Semitic group, up to 5M) that was devised in 2013 and made written the entire family, not{{_}}just Sebat Bet encoded in 2005 {{nspk|sgw}}. Some old letters are now [[pt:obsolete|obsolete]].

[Block.1E800]
Name=Mende Kikakui

[Block.1E900]
Name=Adlam

[Block.1EC70]
Name=Siyaq numbers — Indic
Text=Arabic non-positional numbers used in India since the 17th century (back under Mogul rule) up to mid 20th century. Arabic ''siyaq'' means “order”. Also known as ''raqm'', Arabic “account”.\n\nNumbers up to {{n|90000}} are [[pt:acrophonic|acrophonic]], from Arabic, starting from {{n|100000}} are Indian words. Written right to left, the order is complex: 515 is written as 500, 5 (''prefixed'' variation), 10.

[Block.1ED00]
Name=Siyaq numbers — Ottoman
Text=Arabic non-positional [[pt:acrophonic|acrophonic]] numerals used in late-medieval Turkey, also “rakkamları” (Arabic ''raqm'' “account”). Arabic ''siyaq'' means “order”.\n\nWritten right-to-left, the order is complex: 123 is written as 100, 3, 20. ''Marratan'' symbol is written with thousands to denote millions.

[Block.1EE00]
Name=Arabic mathematical alphabetic symbols
Text=Arabs have their own mathematical notation. They use [[ps:Arab|own]] letters written right-to-left. Like Westerns have Roman, bold, italic and others, Arabs have isolated, initial, tailed, stretched, looped and double-struck letters. Signs are international mirrored, but own exist too{{-}}for example, sum. Even signs “for all” and “exists” are mirrored.\n\nFirst this set was implemented in system of mathematical text TᴇX (pronounced “tech”), and in 2012, after seven years of agreeing on, these works were moved to Unicode.

[Block.1F000]
Name=Mahjong tiles
Text=The gambling game májiàng (often named ''mahjong'' through Romanization) was invented late 19th century, the first surviving set dates to 1870. The game itself is little known to the Western world, but solitaire is widespread: remove identical tiles from the sides of the figure.\n\nThe solitaire was invented by student Brodie Lockard in 1981{{-}}he fell from a trampoline and was completely paralyzed. For the time of rehab, he convinced the CDC company to install a terminal, and he programmed on it holding a stick with teeth. The solitaire was a mixture of two Chinese games, mahjong and “demolish the turtle” played with dominoes. A terminal of the PLATO system was monochrome with 512×512 resolution{{-}}this was enough for such a complex game.\n\nMahjong suits come from one coin (rings), a bundle of 100 coins (bamboos) and {{n|10000}} coins (the ideograph below means ten thousand). Trumps are four winds, three dragons, four seasons and four flowers. Some variants contain other trumps{{-}}professions (fisherman, lumberjack, peasant, scholar) or arts (music, Go, calligraphy, drawing).\n\n…Lockard remained wheelchair-bound, but got fame as a developer of games and assistive software, and alive as of 2023.

[Block.1F030]
Name=Domino tiles
Text=Dominoes were invented by the Chinese about 13th century. In 18th century the game got to Italy.\n\nThere are three versions of name etymology. By the first one, the winner became the lord, ''domino''. By the second one, the game was permitted in monasteries, and monks started every job from prayer to Lord, italian ''Domino''. By the third version, in the honour of black-and-white carnival suit ''domino'' portraying monk.\n\nAfter rethinking the word ''domino'', in mathematics ''trimino'', ''tetramino'' etc appeared{{-}}figures of 3, 4 etc squares.

[Block.1F0A0]
Name=Playing cards
Text=The block unites standard cards and Tarot deck.\n\nThe game of cards was invented about 12th century in East Asia. In Europe, cards were first mentioned in 14th century. Though Muslims deny that they transferred cards to the West, it turned out that Mamluks had their own deck looking like Tarot.\n\nJoker has no relation to Tarot trumps, it was added in 19th century.\n\nUnicode names of trumps correspond to the French Tarot deck (divination is usually done with an Italian deck). Exactly: 0){{_}}fool, 1){{_}}individual, 2){{_}}childhood, 3){{_}}youth, 4){{_}}maturity, 5){{_}}old age, 6){{_}}morning, 7){{_}}afternoon, 8){{_}}evening, 9){{_}}night, 10){{_}}earth and air, 11){{_}}water and fire, 12){{_}}dance, 13){{_}}shopping, 14){{_}}open air leisure, 15){{_}}arts, 16){{_}}spring, 17){{_}}summer, 18){{_}}autumn, 19){{_}}winter, 20){{_}}game, 21){{_}}collective.\n\nThe block has one [[pt:emoji|emoji]], black joker.

[Block.1F100]
Name=Enclosed alphanumeric supplement
Text=Japanese television characters, characters from ''Webdings'' font, characters of intellectual property…\n\nBlood groups, parking sign and some other characters are [[pt:emoji|emoji]].\n\n[[pt:country|Flag]] emoji are assembled from regional indicators: if you write “GB” emoji, you’ll get flag of Great Britain.

[Block.1F200]
Name=Enclosed ideographic supplement
Text=Ideographs in brackets, squares, circles used in Japanese placards and television.\n\n1F227…1F231, 1F240…1F248 are signs from Japanese baseball reports: pitcher, catcher, 1st base… This sport is popular in Japan, in Tokyo Olympics 2021 they got gold in baseball and softball! 1F214 has double purpose: two-language broadcasting and 2nd base player.\n\n1F260…1F265 are six characters from Chinese folk beliefs: luck, prosperity, longevity, happiness, love, plenty.

[Block.1F300]
Name=Symbols and pictographs miscellaneous
Text=This block contains [[pt:emoji|emoji]] (both Japanese and international), dingbats and characters from user interfaces.\n\nDestiny of pistol {{em|🔫}} is remarkable: starting from Apple, vendors settled on toy to diminish Internet threatenings.

[Block.1F600]
Name=Emoticons
Text=Emoticons or smilies are characters and pictograms that display emotions. By the moment of proposal (2008) emoticons had been circulating in Japanese cellular networks for about 9 years. According to Consortium’s study (2019), six of the ten most used [[pt:emoji|emoji]] are smilies.

[Block.1F650]
Name=Ornamental dingbats
Text=Part of dingbat fonts ''Wingdings'' and ''Webdings''.

[Block.1F680]
Name=Transport and map symbols
Text=Icons and [[pt:emoji|emoji]] of vehicles, map symbols and navigation signs, mostly for compatibility with encodings of Japanese cellphone operators.

[Block.1F700]
Name=Alchemical symbols
Text=Antoine Lavoisier (end of 18th century) is often considered the founder of chemistry. He closed down, for example, the phlogiston theory. And before him, different theories of why substances react existed, sometimes weird. Some alchemists even speculated that science could make gold or create artificial life. Their signs for various substances and methods of processing them were systemless but understandable for anyone who knows Latin and ancient doctrines.\n\nIn Unicode{{_}}15.0 eight characters from astronomy and astrology are added.

[Block.1F780]
Name=Geometric shapes extended
Text=This block was introduced in an attempt to encode dingbat fonts ''Wingdings'' and ''Webdings''. It also allowed putting an arrow or cross exactly as thick as needed.\n\nCharacters for the game of Go and colour icons were added later{{-}}even if there’s no [[pt:ligature|ligature]] of yellow ribbon, pair {{em|🎀🟨}} will be understandable.

[Block.1F800]
Text=148 arrows from ''Wingdings'' and ''Webdings'' fonts. Also arrows from [[pk:1FB00|legacy]] computers, [[ps:Egyp|Egyptology]] (reading direction of columnwise text), and chemistry.\n\nArrows 1F8B8…BB are very thick on [[po:Ohio]], but Consortium decided to draw them in normal thickness.

[Block.1F900]
Name=Symbols and pictographs supplemental
Text=Introduced in 2015 and contains characters of various use, mainly [[pt:emoji|emoji]]. Also several characters from Typicon, a standard statute of Orthodox worship codified about 1100, last major edits 1695.

[Block.1FA00]
Name=Chess symbols
Text=In movable-type printing turned pieces were often used for fairy chess pieces as the only option. Well-established non-standard pieces (except weakened and borrowed from other games) are:\n* neutral piece: both players may move it;\n* knight-queen{{-}}also superqueen, omnipotent queen, maharajah, amazon, dragon, terror;\n* knight-bishop{{-}}also archbishop, cardinal, princess, centaur;\n* knight-rook{{-}}also empress, marshal, chancelor;\n* grasshopper{{-}}queen that must jump over a piece (own or opponent’s) to do a move, drawn as inverted queen;\n* mann, man, prince{{-}}moves like a king but isn’t royal (cannot castle, no need to protect), drawn as inverted king;\n* berolina, Berlin pawn, antipawn{{-}}moves one square diagonally forward and takes one square forward, in contrast to ordinary pawn, drawn as an inverted or slanted pawn;\n* nightrider, knightrider, knightmare, unicorn{{-}}does several knight’s leaps in a single direction, blocked with own pieces and takes opponent’s in landing points, drawn as inverted or altered knight;\n* other knights (3-2, 4-1, combined with pawn…) are rare but exist;\n* equihopper{{-}}chooses any piece (own or opponent’s), leaps over it and lands at the same distance on other side. If it leaps in eight cardinal directions, all squares from start to end except the springboard piece must be empty. Highly maneuverable, but constrained to a quarter of squares.\n\nTwo pieces from proto-chess:\n* alfil (elephant){{-}}ancestor of bishop, moves two squares diagonally, jumping over pieces;\n* ferz (minister){{-}}ancestor of queen, moves one square diagonally.\n\nThis block also contains pieces of the Chinese game of Xiangqi.

[Block.1FA70]
Name=Symbols and pictographs extended A
Text=[[pt:emoji|Emoji]] block that appeared in 2019. Clothes, medical items, entertainment, different objects, food…

[Block.1FB00]
Name=Symbols for legacy computing
Text=Characters from different computers and systems of 1970s and 80s: [[po:AmstradCpc]], [[po:Aquarius]], [[po:Atari400]], [[po:AtariSt]], [[po:Trs80]], [[po:CoCo]], [[po:Oric]], [[po:Apple2]], [[po:C64]], [[po:Zx80]], [[po:Msx]], [[po:RiscOs]], [[po:Teletext]], [[po:Minitel]]{{-}}and, by coincidence, [[po:Korvet]], a Soviet PC.\n\nUnicode{{_}}16 added more systems: [[po:Smalltalk]], [[po:SharpMz]], [[po:Kaypro]], [[po:Ohio]], [[po:Robotron]], [[po:Hp]].\n\n'''Did not''' advance to standard:\n* characters in intellectual property, like the Apple logo;\n* signs [[pt:unification|already present]] in existing [[pt:pseudographics|pseudographics]] blocks. In right fonts old and new pseudographics should tile together: {{sm|█🬗}}\n\nInitially (since version 1.0) supported: [[po:Ibm]], [[po:Mac]], [[po:Spectrum]], [[po:BbcMaster]].

[Block.20000]
Text=Rare and historical [[ps:Hani|CJK ideographs]]. These ideographs were packed into the standard font “SimSun-ExtB” for Windows. Later many mistakes in the block were found, and even eight erroneously duplicated ideographs.

[Block.2A700]
Text={{n|4149}} rare and old ideographs added in 2009. In 2021 4 more were added.

[Block.2B740]
Text=222 rare and old ideographs added in 2010.

[Block.2B820]
Text={{n|5762}} rare and old ideographs added in 2015.

[Block.2CEB0]
Text={{n|7473}} ideographs added in 2017, including rare, old and more than {{n|1000}} from Zhuang language.

[Block.2EBF0]
Text=In late 2022, mainland China attempted to fork Unicode by mapping 897 ideographs found in Chinese names to unallocated plane 0A. To prevent this, the ideographs were quickly vetted by experts, and 622 of them were identified as encodable.\n\nCharacter repertoire is usually frozen long before the beta version. For example, black bird (crow/raven) was recoded from 1FABE to {{em|🐦}}+[[pt:zwj|ZWJ]]+{{em|⬛}}, and 1FABE became a hole. This time characters were frozen just a month before Unicode{{_}}15.1 was released.\n\nAll other ideographs were postponed for the sake of this urgent job. Only half a year left since fixing characters (August 2023) to the next beta (spring 2024), and Unicode{{_}}16 added no new ideographs.

[Block.2F800]
Name=CJK compatibility ideographs supplement
Text=Introduced in 2001. [[pt:unification|Disunification]] of 542 ideographs for [[pt:convertibility|round-trip compatibility]] with Taiwanese encoding CNS{{_}}11643-1992. Of course, all ideographs in this block are traditional.

[Block.30000]
Text=In 2020 Unicode stepped into [[pt:plane|plane]] number 3, and allocated {{n|4939}} old and rare characters there. This block contains two record-beating ideographs:\n* ''biang''{{-}}written twice in Chinese noodle ''biangbiang'': U+30EDD simplified 42 strokes, U+30EDE traditional 58 strokes;\n* ''daito'' or ''otodo''{{-}}84-stroke ideograph of Japanese invention meaning ''appearance of a dragon in flight'', U+3106C.

[Block.31350]
Text=Rare ideographs, mainly from old Chinese newspapers.

[Block.323B0]
Text=Ideographs from various sources: Chinese names, Korean history site, newspaper archives, Taiwanese encoding…\n\n[[pk:2EBF0|2022 China’s attempt]] to fork Unicode postponed everything else, and time was short to Unicode{{_}}16{{_}}beta. So a new bunch of {{n|4000}}{{_}}ideographs made it to Unicode{{_}}17 only.

[Block.E0000]
Name=Tags
Text=This block mirrors [[pt:ascii|ASCII]]. Initially (Unicode{{_}}3.1, 2001) tags were used to specify language by agreement between sender and receiver. This use was completely [[pt:deprecated|deprecated]], but in Unicode{{_}}9.0 (2017) tags were returned as [[pt:emoji|emoji]] modifiers. Now they are used only for regional flags, three regions are defined: England, Wales, and Scotland.

[Block.E0100]
Name=Variation selectors supplement
Text=Supplemental variation selectors are used with [[ps:Hani|CJK ideographs]] only to set specific regional variation. But nothing prevents from using them with other characters by discretion of font designer.

[Script.Zyyy]
Name=None
Text=Characters outside script.

[Script.Adlm]
Name=Adlam
Lang=Fula
LangNote=family of West African languages
Note=late 1980s
Text=Fula, Fulani, or Fulbe are nomadic herders, anthropologically the closest to Europeans in Sub-Saharan Africa and the most avid advocates of Islam in West Africa.\n\nThe alphabet was invented by brothers Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry, who were teenagers, to convey Fula languages better than Latin or Arabic. The new script caught on, and it is taught in schools if Guinea, Liberia and other countries, Android is localized.\n\nAlphabet is named after four letters: A, D, L, M. These letters mean “Alkule Dandayɗe Leñol Mulugol”{{-}}“alphabet that protects peoples from vanishing”.\n\nLetters are joined, though many modern publications do not join.\n\nBefore that there were two attempts to make the Fula alphabet, both are absent in Unicode: Dita script (≈1958, inspired with pre-Arabic culture) and Ba’s alphabet (1963). Sometimes Ajami or Wolofal is used{{-}}greatly modified [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] type. The main script is [[ps:Latn|Latin]].

[Script.Aghb]
Name=Causasian Albanian (Aghwank)
Lang=Aghwank ''(=Gargarean, language of Caucasian Albania)''
Text=The country has{{_}}no{{_}}relation to Balkan Albania, and its autonym is unknown: ''Albania'' is a Greek name, ''Aghwank'' is a modern Armenian. People spoke Lezgic languages. Since 1st century BC had a strong kingdom. In 461 was conquered by Persians, in 7th century submitted to Khazars for a short time and got liberty again. From 10th century part of Albania was Turkified and transformed into Shirvan (modern Azerbaijan) and Karabakh. Other regions took part in the ethnogenesis of Armenians, Georgians of Kakheti, Dagestanians. Possibly the alphabet was used up to 12th century by descendant languages. The country spans modern Russia and Georgia, and is thus conventionally classified as Europe.\n\nArmenian sources state that the script was created by Mesrop Mashtots, creator of [[ps:Armn|Armenian]] alphabet{{-}}but those sources do{{_}}not{{_}}contain script samples, and it is{{_}}not{{_}}confirmed with non-Armenian sources. In 1886 a 16th century note in Armenian with Albanian script was found. In 1937 Soviet Armenologists found the full alphabet. In 1948 an early Christian temple of 6th century with authentic inscriptions was excavated when building a hydro power plant. In 1996 Sinai Palimpsest was found, the Bible written in Albanian, then erased and written in Georgian. It helped in decipherment, and the first one came in 2008.

[Script.Ahom]
Name=Ahom
Lang=Tai-Ahom ''(Assam, under revival)''
Text=Tais who settled in the Brahmaputra river valley created a script based on Indic abugida. By 19th century the language was finally supplanted with Assamese with [[ps:Beng|Bengali]] script. Revived since 1954, decimal numbers without historical justification were added to the script. Tonal system of Tai-Ahom is entirely lost{{-}}script did{{_}}not{{_}}convey it.

[Script.Arab]
Name=Arabic
Lang=Arabic {{nspk}}, Persian, Urdu, Uighur, Pashto…
Text=The script developed from [[ps:Armi|Aramaic]] through [[ps:Syrc|Syriac]] and/or [[ps:Nbat|Nabataean]]. Arabic language is closely related to Islam; Quran (610–632) is written in that language. Copyists of Quran were those who settled the final alphabet. Arab Caliphate enforced both Islam and script. Many Islamic peoples (Turks, Kazakhs, Bashkirs) used Arabic until the early 20th century.\n\nComputer Arabic is complicated with the writing of Arabic letters: each has isolated, initial, medial and final forms. In normal text “[[pt:character|general-form]]” letters adapting to position in the word are preferred. But if you need the final form in an isolated letter, Unicode has “rigid” variants.

[Script.Armi]
Name=Imperial Aramaic
Lang=Imperial Apamaic ''(=Official Aramaic{{-}}one of languages of Persia 500–329{{_}}BC)''
Text=In 593{{_}}BC Achaemenid Persia conquered Babylon and created a book language based on Aramaic, so codified that it’s extremely difficult to identify the place and date of a specific document. With the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great (330{{_}}BC) fragmentation of language started, and [[ps:Syrc|Syriac]] (ancestors of [[ps:Arab|Arabic]]) and Jewish (ancestors of [[ps:Hebr|Hebrew]]) languages began to form.\n\nNumbers are made by combining numerals 1, 2, 3, 10, 20, 100, {{n|1000}} and {{n|10000}}: 55{{_}}= 20 20 10 3 2;{{_}} 103{{_}}= 100 3;{{_}} 300{{_}}= 3 100 (right to left!)

[Script.Armn]
Name=Armenian
Lang=Armenian
Text=The script was invented by scholar and priest Mesrop Mashtots (362–440). No one knows whether he took any alphabet as a base (maybe non-survived ancient Armenian letters). Alphabet is closely related to the spread of Christianity in Armenia. In 12th century letters {{sm|Օ}} and {{sm|Ֆ}} were added.\n\nIt is believed that Armenian literature was richer than Middle Persian (pre-Islamic) because Armenian alphabet was simpler than [[ps:Mani|Manichaean]].

[Script.Avst]
Name=Avestan
Lang=Avestan, Middle Persian
Text=The alphabet is related to Zoroastrianism and its holy text Avesta. About 400 a special alphabet based on Book Pahlavi (script on Middle-Persian manuscripts) was created in Sasanid Persia to codify Avesta. By that time Zoroastrianism was many centuries old and language was little-understood, and prayers should be precisely repeated to be effective{{-}}so the alphabet was equipped with true vowels borrowed from neighbouring scripts.\n\nUnder Arabs Zoroastrians started to move to India, and since 12th century wrote in Avestan with local abugidas, traditionally [[ps:Gujr|Gujarati]]. The most famous of those Zoroastrians is Freddie Mercury (but his parents moved as far as to Zanzibar).\n\nIn 2000 ancient scripts were divided into five categories: A (in modern use{{-}}[[ps:Copt|Coptic]], [[ps:Runr|runes]]), B1 (studied [[pt:character|encodeable]]{{-}}[[ps:Xpeo|Persian cuneiform]]), B2 (studied unencodeable{{-}}[[ps:Egyp|Egyptian hierogyphs]]), C1 (non-systematic, requests from amateurs{{-}}[[ps:Xsux|Sumerian cuneiform]]), and C2 (unexplored, requests from amateurs{{-}}[[pk:101D0|Phaistos Dics]]). Avestan fell into the most important category A, and that gave it a chance for a place in [[pt:bmp|Basic Plane]]. But another opinion prevailed: encode Avestan and [[ps:Phlp|Pahlavi]] next to each other, in the supplementary plane. A hole was left for the unencoded Book Pahlavi.

[Script.Bali]
Name=Balinese
Lang=Balinese, Sasak
Text=Comes from [[ps:Kawi|Kawi]]. Inherent vowel is {{t|a}}. Balinese script is supplanted with [[ps:Latn|Latin]] in everyday use, but is still important in Hindu religion.

[Script.Bamu]
Name=Bamum
Lang=Bamum ''(Cameroon)''
Text=The script was invented by Ibrahim Njoya, Sultan of Bamum (west of Cameroon). Seven versions (phases) were released, A to G, starting from ideographic and finishing with syllabic. But Njoya’s alphabet did{{_}}not{{_}}convey all tones, and there were many homographs. French came in 1918, overthrew Njoya and switched the language to [[ps:Latn|Latin]], but the script continued to work in limited volume until Njoya’s death in the 1930s. In 2007 a revival project started, but the progress is insignificant. You [[pk:16800|can see]] earlier Njoya’s arts in supplementary planes of Unicode.\n\nConsonants are initially voiceless, adding the same vowel makes it voiced: {{sm|ꚫ}} pa + {{sm|ꚠ}} a = ba. Vowel after syllable puts other vowel: {{sm|ꚫ}} pa + {{sm|ꚧ}} o = po. Circumflex over a character changes syllable somehow{{-}}puts a gottal stop, removes nasalization, changes vowel… The top line works as [[pt:virama|virama]] removing a vowel from syllable, and is attested above just 13 signs.

[Script.Bass]
Name=Bassa Vah
Lang=Bassa
Text=Bassa named Thomas Lewis discovered that former slaves from America use an unusual script. By other data, he created the script for himself. Bassa call the script ''Vah''{{-}}“throw a sign”. The authentic script was widespread in 20th century, and in 21st it is being steadily supplanted with [[ps:Latn|Latin]].

[Script.Batk]
Name=Batak
Lang=Batak family ''(Sumatra)''
Text=Batak, like other Indonesian scripts, comes from [[ps:Kawi|Kawi]]. Germans, then Dutch started to teach both Batak script and [[ps:Latn|Latin]] to islanders. Short before World War{{_}}I Batak alphabet was dropped and finally supplanted with Latin, the main script of the Indonesian language.\n\nInherent vowel is {{t|a}}. In different languages (Karo, Mandailing, Pakpak, Toba, Simalungun) letters are a bit different. There are two [[pt:virama|viramas]]: horizontal one is used in Karo and Simalungun, slanted in the rest of the languages.\n: ba {{sm|ᯅ}} + virama {{sm|◌᯳}} = b {{sm|ᯅ᯳}}\n: ba {{sm|ᯅ}} + i {{sm|◌ᯪ}} + ng {{sm|◌ᯰ}} = bing {{sm|ᯅᯪᯰ}}

[Script.Beng]
Name=Bengali
Lang=Bengali {{nspk}}, Assamese {{nspk|as}}, Sanskrit ''(Bangladesh, India)''
Note=11th century (separated from Gaudi), 15th century (in modern form)
Text=Belongs to the eastern branch of Indic script. Originates from [[ps:Sidd|Siddham]] via ''Gaudi'', ancestor of Bengali and [[ps:Orya|Oriya]]. Bengali and Assamese script differ insignificantly and [[pt:unification|unified]]. The inherent vowel is {{t|ɔ}}, in Unicode named “a” by convention, in other sources also “ô”. To change the vowel, vowel marks are added: {{sm|ক}}=kô, {{sm|কি}}=ki.\n\n[[pt:virama|Virama]] (''hôsôntô'', remove inherent vowel) is extremely rare{{-}}{{sm|নাক্ }}= nôk{{-}}because Bengali has multiple [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] made of two consonants: {{sm|ক্ত}}=ktô. Because of this, Bengali is considered one of the most beautiful scripts in the world. Ligature input is standard: first letter, virama, second letter.\n\nBangladesh is one of two Islamic states with own script (not{{_}}[[ps:Arab|Arabic]], not{{_}}[[ps:Latn|Latin]], not{{_}}[[ps:Cyrl|Cyrillic]]). The other is [[ps:Thaa|Maldives]].

[Script.Berf]
Name=Beria Erfe
Lang=Zaghawa {{nspk||=Beria}}
Text=The script was made by schoolteacher Adam Tajir from clan brands for camels. Apart from glyphs, the alphabet was a crude copy of [[ps:Arab|Arabic]]. In 2000, veterinarian Siddick Adam Issa improved the script, and it has proven popular.\n\nA peculiar feature of Beria: capital letters grow downwards. Tones are marked with ordinary [[pk:0300|diacritics]]: àáā. Numbers and punctuation are European.

[Script.Bhks]
Name=Bhaiksuki (arrowhead script)
Lang=Sanskrit
Text=It was used in East India in 11–12th centuries, and was mentioned by Chorasmian (modern Turkmenistan/Uzbekistan) scientist Al-Biruni. The first inscription was discovered in Kathmandu in 1884, it was hypothesized that it’s Biruni’s “Bhaiksuki”. 4 manuscripts and 11 inscriptions exist, all are Buddhist texts. Digits 0 and 3 are unknown and taken from similar scripts. The initial letter for long vocalic L is also unknown.\n\nThe inherent vowel is {{t|a}}, the rest are added with vowel marks, turned to plain consonants with [[pt:virama|virama]]. Because of an extensive system of [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] “consonant-consonant”, virama in explicit form is seen only at the end of words.\n: ka {{sm|𑰎}} + i {{sm|◌𑰰}} = ki {{sm|𑰎𑰰}}\n: ka {{sm|𑰎}} + virama {{sm|◌𑰿}} = k {{sm|𑰎𑰿}}\n: ka {{sm|𑰎}} + virama {{sm|◌𑰿}} + ta {{sm|𑰝}} = kta {{sm|𑰎𑰿𑰝}}

[Script.Bopo]
Name=Bopomofo (Zhuin)
Lang=Chinese
Text=Bopomofo (by first four letters), or Zhuyin Fuhao is a Chinese phonetic system invented by Wu Zhihui in 1912–13 and adopted in 1918.\n\nThe author achieved a high position in Kuomintang, and that predestined the fate of the system: after Mao Zedong gained power (1949) it was used only in Taiwan. There Bopomofo is also steadily supplanted with usual pinyin (Romanization of Chinese syllables), and used mainly for initial teaching of children, input into cellphones, and search in dictionaries by pronunciation.\n\nIn 2007 in Taiwan Blackberry smartphone hit shelves, it supported entry only via Pinyin and suffered from low demand. In the next versions, Research In Motion promised Zhuyin too.

[Script.Brah]
Name=Brahmi
Lang=Sanskrit, Pali, old Indian languages
Note=before 3rd century BC (for sure), 8–7th century BC (main hypothesis)
Text=No one knows when Brahmi emerged and what was the ancestor{{-}}it’s usually thought that from [[ps:Armi|Aramaic]] in 8–7th century{{_}}BC. Other scholars connect Brahmi to more ancient and yet undeciphered Indus script. The most ancient from reliable sources are pillars of King Ashoka (3rd century{{_}}BC). Earlier sources are poorly dated.\n\nBrahmi has such features: written left-to-right, consonant letter means syllable with {{t|a}} phoneme, the rest of vowels are added with diacritic marks, inherent {{t|a}} is removed with the sign of [[pt:virama|virama]].\n\nScripts of Brahmic origin greatly change the graphics of characters and the inherent phoneme, but conserve these features and are named “Brahmic abugidas”.\n\nConsonant conjuncts are often written with a stack of letters: brāhmī={{sm|𑀩𑁆𑀭𑀸𑀳𑁆𑀫𑀻}} (not rendered properly in Windows{{_}}7/8).\n\nUnicode does{{_}}not{{_}}distunguish Brahmi by time and place; most fonts are close to geometric writings of Ashoka’s pillars. By 5th century Brahmi transformed into two major branches:\n* northern (=Gupta, late Brahmi, northern Brahmi) → [[ps:Shrd|Sharada]], [[ps:Sidd|Siddham]], [[ps:Deva|Nagari]], [[ps:Tibt|Tibetan]], [[ps:Bhks|Bhaiksuki]];\n* southern → [[ps:Gran|Grantha]], [[ps:Khmr|Khmer]]… Khmer, [[ps:Sinh|Sinhala]] and other non-Indian scripts are often distinguished into a separate south-eastern branch.

[Script.Brai]
Name=Braille embossings
Lang=large languages of the world, incl. Latin, Cyrillic, Brahmic, Arabic, Chinese
Text=Braille is a dot writing system for blind people. It uses groups 2×3{{_}}dots with binary encoding, sometimes the fourth row is added. Encoding differs even for British and American Braille. Has several “modes” (letters, numbers, highlight) “switched” with special characters.\n\nLouis Braille, son of a leatherer, at the age of 3 was wounded with an awl and lost vision. Braille managed to enter Valentin Haüy’s school for the blind and used line-embossed type there. The other prototype for Braille is Charles Barbier’s “night writing”. Barbier used a 2×6{{_}}matrix, 1 to 6 dots in each column are embossed, that’s OK for sighted officers sometimes reading by touch, but bad for blind person who reads long texts. Braille reduced the matrix by using binary code. Braille invented his code at the age of 15, and worked in Haüy’s school, but sighted teachers were so against it that only 2{{_}}years after his death blind students convinced teachers to adopt the system.\n\nBraille industrialized assistive technologies for the blind: easy to emboss, does{{_}}not{{_}}come to sight when embossed next to the normal text for sighted people or even over it.

[Script.Bugi]
Name=Buginese (Lontara)
Lang=Buginese {{nspk}} and other languages of Sulavesi island
Text=Buginese script, or Lontara is a descendant of [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]] via [[ps:Kawi|Kawi]], and works similarly. Since Dutch colonization is being supplanted with [[ps:Latn|Latin]]. “Lontara” name means a local palm tree whose leaves Buginese used for writing.\n\nInherend vowel is {{t|a}}: {{sm|ᨀ}}=kа, {{sm|ᨀᨚ}}=kо. Initial vowels are appended to letter {{sm|ᨕ}}: {{sm|ᨕᨚ}}=o. [[pt:virama|Virama]] is absent: the most used consonant conjuncts are separate letters, the rest are not{{_}}written. This deficiency of Lontara is even used as a conundrum: read the pun correctly and find hidden meaning. Some specialists in old writing use virama.

[Script.Buhd]
Name=Buhid
Lang=Buhid
LangNote=Mindoro Island, Philippines
Text=Used by Mangyan, a small ethnic group of the Philippines. The script goes back to [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]] and is a sister script of [[ps:Tglg|Tagalog]].\n\nThe language has just 15 consonants and three vowels: {{t|a}} is inherent, {{t|i}} and {{t|u}} are vowel marks. Initial vowels are separate letters. Other consonants may appear between syllables, they are just omitted: {{sm|ᝐᝒᝑᝋᝓ}} means ''sihamu'', but is pronounced ''singhanmu''.

[Script.Cakm]
Name=Chakma
Lang=Chakma
Text=There are many Chakma speakers and it is absent in lists of endangered languages, but the script is being supplanted with [[ps:Beng|Bengali]]. The script comes from [[ps:Mymr|Myanmar]] and is very old, probably older than the known Myanmar specimen (11th century).\n\nBrahmic abugida with inherent vowel {{t|ā}} (long a) and frequently used [[pt:virama|virama]] ''(maayaa)''. The second virama is for construction of ligatures, most of them were abolished with the reform of 2001.\n: kā {{sm|𑄇}} + i {{sm|◌𑄨}} = ki {{sm|𑄇𑄨}}\n: kā {{sm|𑄇}} + maayaa {{sm|◌𑄴}} = k {{sm|𑄇𑄴}}\n: kā {{sm|𑄇}} + virama {{sm|◌𑄳}} + tā {{sm|𑄖}} = ktā {{sm|𑄇𑄳𑄖}}

[Script.Cari]
Name=Carian
Lang=Carian ''(Anatolia)''
Text=Was used from 7th to 1st century{{_}}BC. Many variants of the alphabet existed. In Anatolia left-to-right writing prevailed, and mercenaries in Egypt wrote right-to-left.\n\nThen-Soviet scientist Vitaly Shevoroshkin in 1960 showed that the script is alphabetic, not{{_}}syllabic. The key book on deciphering (Ignasi-Xavier Adiego) came in 1993. A bilingual inscription with [[ps:Grek|Greek]] found in 1996 confirmed that he was right. Some characters are still unknown.

[Script.Cans]
Name=Canadian Aboriginal syllabics
Lang=languages of Canadian aborigins: Cree, Ojibwe ''(Algonquin)'', Naskapi, Inuiktut ''(Eskimo)''…
Text=Invented by missionary James Evans in 1833. While working on Ojibwe languages, he experienced two troubles: lots of repeating syllables made writing very long, and students often confused rules for English and native. That’s why he made a brand new script for Cree (later adopted by some Ojibwe tribes).\n\nVowel marks are turned letters: ke={{sm|ᑫ}}, ki={{sm|ᑭ}}, ko={{sm|ᑯ}}, ka={{sm|ᑲ}}. More complex syllables (e.g. long vowels) are written with diacritics: kii={{sm|ᑮ}}. A plain consonant is a small letter: k={{sm|ᒃ}}.

[Script.Cham]
Name=Cham
Lang=Cham
Text=Cham script came from Pallava (early [[ps:Gran|Grantha]]), the inherent vowel is {{t|a}}. No [[pt:virama|virama]] (“remove vowel” sign), final consonants are written instead: {{sm|ꨆ}}=ka, {{sm|ꨆꨯ}}=ko, {{sm|ꨆꨯꩃ}}=kong.\n\nMost Chams practice Islam and write with [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] script, just some Chams of Vietnam use Cham script.

[Script.Cher]
Name=Cherokee
Lang=Cherokee
Text=Future chief Sequoia, inventor of Cherokee script, was illiterate but took characters from existing books{{-}}so letters have different meanings than in prototype languages. For example, vowel {{t|i}} is written with the letter {{sm|Ꭲ}}.\n\nThe first pupil was Ayoka, his six-year-old daughter. The invention of script was received with mistrust, he was taken for possessed, but Sequoia and Ayoka brilliantly passed a test, reading each other’s notes. The script quickly spread among the tribe, and {{%|90}} of Cherokee were literate by 1830.\n\nSince 1828, Sequoia took part in negotiations with the USA for Cherokee lands.

[Script.Chis]
Name=Chisoi
Lang=Kurmali
Text=Kurmali is usually written with [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]], [[ps:Orya|Odia]], [[ps:Beng|Bengali]] or [[ps:Latn|Latin]]. This script was created by Jayanta Kumar Mahata. Letter shapes are loosely based on local scripts. The name “Chisoi” is from a children’s rhyme.\n\nDespite resemblance to [[ps:Sora|Sora]] or [[ps:Wara|Warang Citi]] (inherent vowel {{t|ɔ}} is muted with [[pt:virama|virama]]), sources are unanimous: it’s an alphabet.

[Script.Chrs]
Name=Chorasmian
Lang=Chorasmian ''(modern Turkmenistan/Uzbekistan)''
Text=The language was used in Chorasm near the river of Amu Darya until 13th century, gradually losing to Persian. Scientist Biruni and theologian Zamakhshari spoke this language{{-}}but the script of [[ps:Armi|Aramaic]] origin back in 8th century was replaced with [[ps:Arab|Arabic]].\n\nThree Aramaic letters of 22{{-}}''teth, sadhe, qoph''{{-}}have no Chorasmian counterparts. Two letters have variants, 21 letters in total. In most inscriptions, letters are not{{_}}joined, less frequently joined if shape permits.

[Script.Copt]
Name=Coptic
Lang=Coptic
Text=The language originates from [[ps:Egyp|Ancient Egyptian]] and is an important source of it, the script comes from [[ps:Grek|Greek]]. The demotic script was ideo-consonant, and writing in Egyptian with Greek letters (so-called Old Coptic) was regularly employed in 6th century BC, long before Alexander’s conquest of Egypt. The final transition from Demotic to Greek was done by Christians about 3rd century. The Coptic alphabet itself emerged when 6 or 7 letters (depending on dialect) were borrowed from Demotic script. The Sahidic dialect of Coptic (Upper Egypt) became literary in 4th century, in 11th it was replaced with Bohairic (Lower Egypt).\n\nThe word “Copt” is “Egypt” shortened under [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] influence. Its meaning shifted from all people of Egypt to Egyptian Christians. The language and script are still used by Copts as liturgical. Copts speak in Arabian, as a conversational language Coptic died in 17th to 19th century.\n\n{{GrekCoptUni}}

[Script.Cpmn]
Name=Cypro-Minoan
Lang=Eteocypriot (supposedly), Philistine (a few inscriptions exist)
Text=Came supposedly from [[ps:Lina|Linear A]]. About 11th century{{_}}BC transformed into [[ps:Cprt|Cypriot]]. Inscriptions were found in Cyprus and Palestine.\n\nScholars have a consensus on about 30 characters, but perspectives of complete decipherment are vague: only 250 inscriptions exist, with a total of {{n|2500}} characters. For comparison: in undeciphered Linear A{{-}}{n|7000}}, in [[ps:Linb|Linear B]] at the moment of decipherment{{-}}{{n|30000}}.\n\nThe image on the icon is authentic, font is based on Michael Everson’s tracings (2020).

[Script.Cprt]
Name=Cypriot syllabary
Lang=Ancient Greek, Eteocypriot, Phoenician ''(one short inscription)''
Text=Came from [[ps:Lina|Linear A]] through [[ps:Cpmn|Cypro-Minoan]] (do{{_}}not{{_}}confuse!) Was used from 11th to 3rd century{{_}}BC. Inscriptions of 9–8th centuries{{_}}BC are not{{_}}found, later the script fragmented into two branches: Paphos that retained direction →, and common-Cyprus that flipped to ←.\n\nPartly deciphered in 1871 through newly-found bilingual with [[ps:Phnx|Phoenician]], and completely before 1876.

[Script.Cyrl]
Name=Cyrillic
Lang=Russian {{nspk}}, Ukrainian {{nspk|uk}}, Belorussian, Rusyn, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian ''(Serbia)'', Kazakh, Kyrghyz, Tajik, minor languages of Russia
Text=About 863 Byzantine monks Cyril and Methodius invented [[ps:Glag|Glagolitic]] script while working in Moravia. Soon Cyril died, and the Byzantines were driven away to Bulgaria. People there were literate in [[ps:Grek|Greek]], and one of the pupils, presumably Clement of Ohrid, invented Cyrillic based on Byzantine uncial script for [[ps:Grek|Greek]] language, with the addition of phonemes absent in Greek. Greek letters like Ѯ and Ѳ were added for familiar spelling of Greek loanwords and numbers.\n\nCyrillic spread among South Slavs, and came to Rus with the christianization. Cyrillic was explicitly forbidden in countries that fell under the influence of Rome.\n\nModern Cyrillic comes back to the civil script introduced by Peter the Great. That script became a compromise between supporters of the West and traditionalists.\n\nThe USSR made Cyrillic scripts for most languages of its republics. With the fall of the USSR Azerbaijan, Moldova, Turkmenia and Uzbekistan switched to [[ps:Latn|Latin]].

[Script.Deva]
Name=Devanagari
Lang=Hindi {{nspk}}, Marathi {{nspk|Modi}}, Sanskrit and other languages of India
Text=Devanagari (literally ''from the city of the gods'') emerged from Brahmi script and became the alphabet for most Indian languages. A distinctive feature of Devanagari: letters hang from a horizontal line.\n\nConsonant letters mean syllables with vowel {{t|a}} (in some languages and dialects {{t|ə}}). To display other syllables, vowel mark is needed: <nobr>ka {{sm|क}} + i {{sm| ि}} = ki {{sm|कि}}</nobr>. To get a single consonant, [[pt:virama|virama]] (''stop'' or ''killer'') mark is added: k{{_}}{{sm|क्}}.\n\nViramas in Devanagari are rare, and mostly occur at the end of words because of [[pt:ligature|ligatures]]:\n: ka {{sm|क}} + virama {{sm|◌्}} + ša {{sm|ष}} = kša {{sm|क्ष}}\n\n''Unicodia'' uses ''Noto Serif Devanagari'' font due to wide coverage. In real-life text it’s better to use other fonts: for example, [[http://www.sanskritweb.net/itrans/index.html#SIDDHANTA|Siddhanta]] or [[https://software.sil.org/annapurna/|Annapurna SIL]].

[Script.Diak]
Name=Dives Akuru (ancient Maldivian)
Lang=Divehi ''(Maldivian)''
Text=Developed in Maldives from [[ps:Gran|Grantha]] and existed until 18th century, and in some islands until 20th. Early form (before 12th century) scholars call ''Evela Akuru'' (retronym, not{{_}}autonym!). With the adoption of Islam ''Evela'' transformed to ''Dives'', remaining left-to-right. In the early 18th century was replaced with [[ps:Thaa|Thaana]], now right-to-left, by the Sultan’s decree.\n\nAncient Maldivian had plenty of both phonemes and letter variants: the same document contained initial vowels both as separate letters and as marks upon U+11925. ''Dives'' script retained the latter form, dropped palatal and aspirated consonants.\n\nInherent vowel is {{t|a}}, replaced by other with vowel [[pt:combining|marks]], removed in the end of words with [[pt:virama|virama]] sign ''(halanta)''. In the middle of words, virama means the alternate pronunciation of “u” vowel. Another virama is purely virtual and serves for consonant conjuncts{{-}}two letters are just stuck together (also 13 [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] such as “sta” exist).\n: ka {{sm|𑤌}} + i {{sm|◌𑤱}} = ki {{sm|𑤌𑤱}}\n: ka {{sm|𑤌}} + halanta {{sm|◌𑤽}} = k {{sm|𑤌𑤽}}\n: ka {{sm|𑤌}} + virama {{sm|◌𑤾}} + ta {{sm|𑤛}} = kta {{sm|𑤌𑤾𑤛}}\n: sa {{sm|𑤬}} + virama {{sm|◌𑤾}} + ta {{sm|𑤛}} = sta {{sm|𑤬𑤾𑤛}}\n: sa + halanta + ṭa + halanta + na = súṭúna {{sm|𑤬𑤽𑤖𑤽𑤟}}

[Script.Dogr]
Name=Dogra
Lang=Dogri
Text=Language of Dogri, people of India. The script is borrowed from [[ps:Takr|Takri]], standardized in the middle of 19th century under Maharaja Ranbir Singh. After Ranbir died in 1885, under British pressure [[ps:Arab|Urdu]] was chosen as the official language. In 20th century writing in [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]] prevailed, and since 21st century people started to be interested in native script.\n\nBrahmic abugida with inherent vowel {{t|ə}} (In Unicode conventionally “a”) that’s greatly reduced in unstressed syllables, like in [[ps:Guru|Punjabi]]. Also [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] exist in Dogri, unencoded in this font. That’s why [[pt:virama|virama]] is rare in Dogri, it’s seen in autonym: {{sm|𑠖𑠵𑠌𑠤𑠬}} {{t|do-gᵊ-rā}}.\n\nDigits are taken from Takri.

[Script.Dsrt]
Name=Deseret (Mormon)
Lang=English, some languages of Native Americans
Text=In 19th century there were many attempts to make a phonetical script for English, and Brigham Young, the second leader of the Mormon church, was neither the first nor the last. Supposedly it would offer immigrants an opportunity to learn English more easily. The main job was done by Parley Pratt and George Watt.\n\n''Deseret'' (“honeybee” in one of the languages of the Book of Mormon) is a project of the Mormon state implemented to a lesser extent as ''Utah'' and has symbolic meaning among Mormons (for example, ''University of Deseret'', now ''University of Utah'').\n\nThe alphabet intentionally has no ascenders and descenders, it would reduce the wear of metal type. Ascenders and descenders are sometimes added in modern fonts.\n\nFour books were published in the new alphabet. When Young realized how much publishing of the entire library costs, experiments stopped.\n\nIn 1997 the alphabet was encoded in [[pt:private|ConScript Unicode Registry]]. Removed in 2001, when Deseret appeared in real Unicode.

[Script.Dupl]
Name=Duployan shorthand
Lang=initially French, then Romanian, English, Spanish, German, some Native American
Text=Shorthand system invented by French priest Émile Duployé. Classified as geometric (characters are made from dots, lines, circles), alphabetic (pays equal attention to consonants and vowels).\n\nWords are written with a single stroke, and writing may go far above or below the line. ''Unicodia'' uses old ''Noto Sans Duployan{{_}}2'' font for clarity, it just gives some glyphs to Unicode characters. In 2023 Noto{{_}}3 came that actually models complex writing{{-}}it’s 2{{_}}megabytes large, contains {{n|10000}} glyphs and 500 rules, and the word “cats” in Perrault system for English (K+A+TS, 1BC05+1BC41+1BC36) looks like\n:{{DuplCats}}

[Script.Egyp]
Name=Egyptian hieroglyphs
Lang=Ancient Egyptian
Text=Egyptian script passed an ordinary way from pictographic writing (words are conveyed with illustrative pictures) through ideographic (abstract concepts appear{{-}}hieroglyph “sun” means day) to [[pt:abjad|consonant]] (phonetic signs start to emerge). We’ve seen the same way in other well-developed civilizations, for example, [[ps:Xsux|Sumerian]].\n\nWriting was mostly right-to-left, sometimes left-to-right or top-down. People and animals are always faced towards the beginning of a line. Encoded as left-to-right script, because scholars tend to mirror text for convenience.\n\nBesides hieroglyphs, there were two non-encoded scripts:\n* hieratic (''sacred'') script{{-}}greatly reduced hieroglyphs; used in books and business documents;\n* demotic (''people’s'') script{{-}}appeared in 7th century{{_}}BC, more alphabetical characters; first letters and business documents, then books.\n\nBut we know hieroglyphs best of all, because they are preserved well carved in stone. Despite the expansion of demotic, hieroglyphs were still in use, though the number of people who understood complex script constantly reduced. With the advent of Christianity hieroglyphs were finally abandoned, the last inscription is dated 394{{_}}CE.\n\nUsing a bilingual with [[ps:Grek|Greek]] and knowledge of [[ps:Copt|Coptic]], in 1820s Jean-François Champollion managed to read first names, then text, and soon died. His works were validated in 1860s, long after his death.\n\nIn Windows fonts three hieroglyphs of penis are hidden{{-}}only displayed next to other hieroglyphs.\n\nIn Unicode{{_}}5.2 (2009) sample characters were historic enough (from Alan Gardiner’s book of 1957), but primitive. In Unicode{{_}}9.0 (2016) they were redrawn by a professional designer, deviating from the truth someway. Since Unicode{{_}}14.0 (2021) Egyptologists are fixing mistakes, some characters (e.g. 1309A) were changed twice. Hair and beard define who is drawn{{-}}god, king, Egyptian or foreigner.

[Script.Elba]
Name=Elbasan Gospel alphabet for Albanian
Lang=Albanian
Text=The only source is the 59-page Elbasan Gospel of mid-18th century,  just 7×10{{_}}cm in size. In 1945 Lef Nosi, a pro-Nazi philologist and collector, was arrested by the socialist government and soon was sentenced to death, and the manuscript was found in his collection. Authorship is attributed to Gregory of Durrës, an Albanian monk.\n\nIt is believed that local Albanian scripts (Elbasan, [[ps:Vith|Vithkuqi]], [[ps:Todr|Todhri]], Veso-Bey, Vellara) were used as a cipher against Turks. According to other data, Albanian enlightened men took an example from Slavs, Greeks and Turks with their own alphabets.\n\nDo{{_}}not{{_}}confuse with [[ps:Todr|Todhri]] alphabet, sometimes also named Elbasan!

[Script.Elym]
Name=Elymaic
Lang=Elamite ''(Gulf of Persia)''
Text=Persia ceased existence after military defeats by Alexander the Great. Alexander’s descendants could{{_}}not{{_}}handle a multinational empire, and after a breakdown, Elymais appeared among other nations.\n\nThe state existed 147{{_}}BC to 224{{_}}CE, often fell under Parthian reign and had a script of [[ps:Armi|Aramaic]] origin with unjoined letters. No{{_}}punctuation signs besides space are known. Native letter names are unknown and taken from Aramaic.

[Script.Ethi]
Name=Ethiopic (Ge’ez)
Lang=Amharic {{nspk}}, Tigrinya ''(10M as of 2020)'' and other Ethiosemitic
Note=as abugida
Text=Ethiopic script was used for the Ge’ez language that fell out of use in 13th century. Script of [[ps:Sarb|South Arabian]] origin, with the advent of Christianity in 4th century vowel marks appeared. Ge’ez is still used by Ethiopian Christians as liturgical{{-}}and the script spread to other languages of Ethiopia.\n\nIt has a numeral system of [[ps:Grek|Greek]] type, only 1 to 9 and 10 to 90 are writable with 26 consonants. 83692={{sm|፰፼፴፮፻፺፪}}, i.e. 8-10000-30-6-100-90-2.\n\nLoses influence since the late 20th century. For all languages except Ethiosemitic (Blin{{-}}Kushitic family, Mekan{{-}}Nilo-Saharan) [[ps:Latn|Latin]] script is introduced.

[Script.Gara]
Name=Garay
Lang=Wolof {{nspk}}, Mandinka {{nspk|mnk}}
Text=After the liberation of Africa, many new scripts appeared. This one was created by Assane Faye from Senegal. Garay is the name of a local cave.\n\nThe current community is small, about 200 people. Wolof and Mandinka are written with [[ps:Latn|Latin]], [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] and [[ps:Nkoo|N’Ko]].\n\nCapital letters have a big hook. Scripts of Arabic origin often feature joined letters, but Garay doesn’t. Sometimes the entire word is underlined with a big swash coming from the last letter.\n\nVowels are marks attached to consonants. Initial vowels hang on the vowel carrier letter (A).\n\nRead the autonym: {{sm|&rlm;&#68953;&#68938;&#68990;&#68938;&#68988;}}

[Script.Geor]
Name=Georgian
Lang=Geogian {{nspk}}, Megrelian {{nspk|xmf}} and other Kartvelian languages
Text=No one knows when the Georgian script was created and what was the prototype. The widespread opinion that the Georgian alphabet was made by Mesrop Mashtots, creator of [[ps:Armn|Armenian]] alphabet, is rejected by scientists. Alphabetical order is [[ps:Grek|Greek]].\n\nGeorgian language is unicameral, but historically Unicode has four styles of writing, in order of codes:\n* Asomtavruli{{-}}obsolete capital letters. Because of poor sample [[pt:character|glyphs]], this range affixed to Asomtavruli style;\n* Mkhedruli{{-}}ordinary Georgian with many ascenders and descenders;\n* [[pk:1C90|Mtavruli]]{{-}}“capital” form of ordinary Georgian without ascenders and descenders;\n* [[pk:2D00|Nuskhuri]]{{-}}italic church [[pt:minuscule|minuscule]].

[Script.Glag]
Name=Glagolitic
Lang=Proto-Slavic
Text=Glagolitic was invented about 863 by Byzantians Cyril and Methodius for a political mission{{-}}drive away Western priests from Moravia and establish an autonomous church to prevent from being conquered by Franks. Mission failed, Cyril died soon, Byzantians were driven away by the Western church, and fugitives from Moravia christianized Bulgaria and invented [[ps:Cyrl|Cyrillic]].\n\nIn 20th century it was finally proved that Glagolitic is older than Cyrillic: expensive parchment was often reused, and palimpsests (parchments with one text erased and other written) survived where Glagolitic was rewritten with Cyrillic. Linguistic arguments also exist. Nevertheless, Glagolitic co-existed with Cyrillic until 19th century and took letter forms from it, and that caused controversy. Possibly, the name ''Cyrillic'' initially meant Glagolitic script.\n\nGlagolitic seldom appeared in Rus, more often it was used in Bulgaria and Croatia. Bulgarian style is round, Croatian is square, and both are [[pt:unification|unified]].

[Script.Gong]
Name=Gunjala script (Gondi)
Lang=Southern Gondi
Text=In 2006, documents from 1750 were found in the village of Gunjala. People who could read the script confirmed later that this was Gondi. The discovery was shown in 2014, and the state of Andhra Pradesh started to revive the script. Moreover, the language is virtually unwritten, people sporadically write in [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]] and [[ps:Telu|Telugu]].\n\nEach letter means a syllable with {{t|a}}. To make another vowel, vowel marks are added. The script does{{_}}not{{_}}distinguish between long and short {{t|e}} and {{t|o}}, there are arguments about introducing new letters. [[pt:virama|Virama]] (“remove vowel” sign) is visible at the end of words only. In consonant conjuncts it detaches a letter from headstroke.\n: ka {{sm|𑵱}} + i {{sm|◌𑶋}} = ki {{sm|𑵱𑶋}}\n: ka {{sm|𑵱}} + virama = k {{sm|𑵱𑶗}}\n: ka {{sm|𑵱}} + virama + ta {{sm|𑵳}} = kta {{sm|𑵱𑶗𑵳}}

[Script.Gonm]
Name=Masaram script (Gondi)
Lang=Gondi {{nspk}}, Marathi
Text=According to 2011 census, 13{{_}}million people identify as Gondi, but just 3{{_}}million know language. Gondi usually is written in [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]] and [[ps:Telu|Telugu]], but Munshi Mangal Singh Masaram in 1918 made a script based on other Indic scripts. Modern use of this script is insignificant.\n\nEvery letter has a horizontal stroke meaning {{t|a}} vowel. To get other vowels, vowel marks are put to this stroke. There are two [[pt:virama|viramas]]: one is visible, to leave just one consonant in the end of a word, the other is invisible, removes horizontal stroke in consonant conjuncts:\n: ka {{sm|𑴌}} + virama + ta {{sm|𑴛}} + virama + va {{sm|𑴨}} = ktva {{sm|𑴌𑵅𑴛𑵅𑴨}}\n\nThere are several [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] with {{t|r}} phoneme:\n: ka {{sm|𑴌}} + ra-kara {{sm|◌𑵇}} = kra {{sm|𑴌𑵇}}

[Script.Goth]
Name=Gothic
Lang=Gothic
Text=Bishop Wulfila is believed to have created the alphabet: he translated Bible into Gothic and did{{_}}not{{_}}want sacred text to be written with [[ps:Runr|runes]]. Sources of Gothic language of 4–6th centuries are written with this script.\n\nAlphabet is taken from [[ps:Grek|Greek]], letter names are same as runes’. Two letters have numeral value only: {{sm|𐍁}}=90 and {{sm|𐍊}}=900. Because of such origin of script, “canonically looking” Gothic letters are written with a thick pen rather than a sharp object.\n\nLetter {{sm|𐌹̈}} consists of letter {{sm|𐌹}} and combining umlaut U+0308.

[Script.Gran]
Name=Grantha
Lang=Sanskrit, Tamil
Note=4th century (artifacts of Pallava), 7th century (artifacts of Middle Grantha)
Text=Grantha is an intermediate stage of evolution of southern branch of [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]]. Early variant of Grantha is named ''Pallava'' and was used in Pallava Kingdom (275–897). Grantha was used for Tamil language until 17th century, for Sanskrit until 19th. Influenced [[ps:Taml|Tamil]], [[ps:Mlym|Malayalam]], [[ps:Sinh|Sinhala]]. About 200{{_}}thousand specimen are stored in libraries of India, both written on palm leaves and printed.\n\nAbout 2010 an attempt to introduce Grantha in [[pt:unification|unification]] with Tamil failed. Because of uproar (nationalism is strong among Tamils) the scripts were disunified, leaving only digits that coincide in Tamil and late Grantha.\n\nInherent vowel is {{t|a}}. There are multiple [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] for consonant conjuncts.\n: ka {{sm|𑌕}} + i {{sm|◌𑌿}} {{_}} = ki {{sm|𑌕𑌿}}\n: ka {{sm|𑌕}} + virama {{sm|◌𑍍}} = k {{sm|𑌕𑍍}}\n: ka {{sm|𑌕}} + virama {{sm|◌𑍍}} + ta {{sm|𑌤}} = kta {{sm|𑌕𑍍𑌤}}

[Script.Grek]
Name=Greek
Lang=Greek
Note=main hypothesis
Text=Greek script is made from [[ps:Phnx|Phoenician]] without looking to early Greek systems, [[ps:Linb|Linear B]] and [[ps:Cprt|Cypriot]]. Phoenician alphabet was [[pt:abjad|consonant]], and that’s good for Semitic languages where word’s root is a skeleton of consonants, and vowels work as suffixes: in [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] (also Semitic) ''jihad'' is done by ''mujahid''.\n\nGreeks added vowels, and Greek is the first known true alphabet that encodes both consonants and vowels. Letter names didn’t change much, but lost all meaning: ''alef=ox''{{_}}→ ''alpha''.\n\nGreek script became the ancestor for [[ps:Latn|Latin]], [[ps:Cyrl|Cyrillic]], [[ps:Copt|Coptic]], and possibly [[ps:Armn|Armenian]] and [[ps:Runr|runes]].\n\n{{GrekCoptUni}}

[Script.Gujr]
Name=Gujarati
Lang=Gujarati {{nspk}}, Avestan
Text=Emerged from [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]] and looks like it, but even old Gujarati lost distinctive headstroke. Inherent vowel is {{t|ə}}. [[pt:virama|Virama]] is absent in the title language of Gujarati, and is used in computer typesetting just for [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] of consonant conjuncts, but is present in small languages served with script. When entering a ligature, a consonant loses right stem if present.\n{{smtable|kə|*ક|+ i|**◌િ|= ki|*કિ}}\n{{smtable|dhə|*ધ|+ virama|**◌્|+ kə|*ક|= dhkə|*ધ્ક}}\n\nZoroastrians fled from Muslims to India and started to write [[ps:Avst|Avesta]] with local scripts, traditionally Gujarati. The most famous of these Zoroastrians is Freddie Mercury (but his parents moved as far as to Zanzibar). Letter {{t|z}} is missing in Gujarati, and it’s written as “j” with nukta (dot below).

[Script.Gukh]
Name=Gurung Khema
Lang=Gurung
Text=Invented by Bal Narsingh Gurung. In 1997 Indian state of Sikkim recognized Gurung and made Khema the official script.\n\nNo ligatures for consonant conjuncts, [[pt:virama|virama]] (''tholhoma'') is always visible. Vowel length mark is just for [[pt:normalization|decomposition]]. Punctuation is [[pt:ascii|ASCII]], plus vertical bar ''danda'' from [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]].\n\nAt the moment of writing Khema has no Unicode fonts, but in handwriting anusvara (nasalization mark) is tick when empty, and smile when houses a circle inside (e.g. in E+anusvara).

[Script.Guru]
Name=Gurmukhi
Lang=Punjabi
Text=Since 10th century Punjab used [[ps:Shrd|Sharada]] script that badly conveyed local language. New script was invented by Sikh guru Angad, one of founders of religion. He founded schools where people learned native Punjabi instead of classic Sanskrit, and public canteens where people sat together regardless of Hindu varna.\n\nInherent vowel is {{t|ə}} (in Unicode by convertion “a”). The rest vowels are added with vowel marks: {{sm|ਕ}}=kə, {{sm|ਕਿ}}=ki. Vowel {{t|ə}} greatly reduced in unstressed syllables, and is completely silent in the end of words, that’s seen well in autonym: {{sm|ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ}} “gu-rᵊ-mu-khii”. Also there are subjoined letters{{-}}{{sm|ਕ੍ਰ}}{{_}}{{t|krə}}, they are typed in standard way: main letter, [[pt:virama|virama]], subjoined letter. That’s why Punjabi needs virama on a keyboard but not{{_}}in type, but virama in used in dictionaries and Sanskrit. To start a word with vowel, vowel marks are affixed to zero consonant that differs between vowels.\n\nGurmukhi is tightly connected with Sikhism, its name means “said by Guru”. Punjabi Muslims use Shahmukhi (“said by Shah”), a form of [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] alphabet.

[Script.Hang]
Name=Hangul
Lang=Korean
Text=Hangul is a Korean alphasyllabic script. 51 jamo (letters) are united into groups approximately by syllables.\n\nInvented by a group of scientists led by King Sejong the Great, he thought that [[ps:Hani|Chinese ideographs]] badly convey Korean and are difficult for people. Educated people looked superciliiosly at Hangul, considering it women’s, children’s or vernacular script, hence name ''eonmun{{-}}vernacular script''. Later kings even banned Hangul. Growth of poetry and work of Western missionaries somewhat spread use of Hangul. Pro-Japanese government of late 19th century started to ban everything Chinese and introduce Hangul. After annexation of Korea by Japan (1910), Japanese was enforced, in those times “Hangul” name was coined, literally “great script”. In 1946, after liberation from Japan, new orthography was published. The only script of North Korea and the main in South.

[Script.Hani]
Name=CJK ideographs
Lang=Chinese {{nspk}}, Japanese {{nspk|Hira}}, historically Vietnamese and Korean
LangNote=language branch consisting of Northern Chinese=Mandarin and several sister languages
Text=First pictographs are dated with the 6th millennium BC, they were scratched or written with ink, later they were modified to writing with brush. Back in 1st millennium BC people started to abandon ideographs, but China conserved archaic script, there are several reasons:\n* multiethnic population{{-}}besides state-forming people of Han, there were about ten more, and they understood each other at least in writing;\n* suitable grammar{{-}}nuances of word’s meaning are indicated with function words;\n* cult of tradition{{-}}even today the Chinese are rather conservative;\n* meritocracy that worked somehow{{-}}thousands of signs and the ability to write them nicely detected trainable people.\n\nIn the 3rd century CE ideographs were brought to Japan. Many ideographs have both Chinese and Japanese pronunciation: for example, {{sm|月}} (moon) has Chinese pronunciations “getsu” and “gatsu”, and Japanese “tsuki”. The way of reading is defined with context: {{sm|月曜日}}=getsuyōbi (Monday), {{sm|月見}}=tsukimi (watching moon).\n\nIdeographs differ in China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea. Unicode does{{_}}not{{_}}encode these differences: details of writing are conveyed with fonts, and even if the font is wrong it’s understandable what they are writing about.\n\nVietnam dropped ideographs in 1945. North Korea does{{_}}not{{_}}use ideographs, South uses them very seldom.\n\nChinese language is still fragmented into dialects, and it’s impossible to introduce phonetic writing.

[Script.Hano]
Name=Hanunó’o
Lang=Hanunó’o {{nspk}} and other peoples of Mindoro Island, Philippines
Text=Hanunó’o derives from [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]]. Like close relative [[ps:Tglg|Tagalog]], it was originally written on bamboo planks out from body, and read left-to-right.\n\nMark {{t|i}} is always above the letter, and {{t|u}} is attached where convenient: {{sm|ᜪᜳ}} bu, {{sm|ᜱᜳ}} hu. Historically {{t|r}} looked like horizontal or slanted dash, but in 2010s it changed shape.

[Script.Hatr]
Name=Hatran (Asurian)
Lang=Hatran (Ashurian) Aramaic
Text=Descendant of [[ps:Armi|Aramaic]]. Had been used in Hatra (modern Iraq) before 3rd century, until Hatra was destroyed by Shapur{{_}}I Sasanid. All known inscriptions are short, the largest is just 13{{_}}lines long.

[Script.Hebr]
Name=Hebrew
Lang=Hebrew {{nspk}}, Ladino, Yiddish, Aramaic, formerly Karaim and Krymchak
Text=Around 500{{_}}BC, under the rule of Babylon, Jews switched from Paleo-Hebrew, almost exact copy of [[ps:Phnx|Phoenician]], to [[ps:Armi|Aramaic]]. The alphabet is almost a pillar of the universe in Jewish mysticism, and 22 Aramaic letters survived until today, having obtained modern form by 2nd century BC.\n\nOnly consonant phonemes are written, but four letters {{sm|אהוי}} can mean vowels, such letters are named [[pt:abjad|matres lectionis]]. In 6–8th centuries vowel marks were invented{{-}}dots above letters that are important for exact reading of the Torah.\n\nBy 10th century Hebrew had gone from conversation and stayed as a book language only, but Hebrew letters were also used for conversational Jewish languages: Yiddish, Ladino and others. With the advent of the state of Israel, Hebrew was revived as a language of everyday conversation.

[Script.Hent]
Name=Hentaigana
Lang=Japanese
Text=Hentaigana is a general name of obsolete [[ps:Hira|Hiragana]] letters written in extremely sloppy manner.\n\nAuxiliary ayllabary of Man’yōgana emerged from [[ps:Hani|Chinese ideographs]]{{-}}reading of ideograph rather than image mattered. By 10th century Man’yōgana had been supplanted with Hiragana and [[ps:Kana|Katakana]]. There was no system, so different signs for a single syllable existed.\n\nHiragana had been standardized by 1900, exactly one character was left for every syllable. And Hentaigana became something like Western blackletter or Cyrillic uncial{{-}}it was used in postcards, religious documents, diplomas of martial arts schools, and… in signs of restaurants.\n\n“Japornimation” hentai is a homophone: it comes from {{sm|変態}} “hentai” ''perverted'', and Hentaigana from {{sm|変体}} “hentai” ''weird''.

[Script.Hira]
Name=Hiragana
Lang=Japanese
Text=About 3rd century Japanese started to write with [[ps:Hani|Chinese ideographs]]. Auxiliary syllabary of Man’yōgana emerged from ideographs, pronunciation rather than image mattered. Hiragana is just an extremely cursive writing of Man’yōgana.\n\nWomen could{{_}}not{{_}}get education, they wrote with syllabary, and preferred smooth Hiragana to sloppy [[ps:Kana|Katakana]]. Nowadays Hiragana is used for words that do{{_}}not{{_}}have an{{_}}ideograph or it is unknown to writer/reader (except loanwords, they are written with Katakana), word endings, teaching children, pronunciation aids for ideographs.

[Script.Hluw]
Name=Anatolian (Luwian) hieroglyphs
Lang=Luwian
Text=Hieroglyphs are named by place they were found ''(Anatolia = Asia Minor)'', or by language ''(Luwian)''. The name ''Hittite'' is incorrect, Hittite language was never written with those hieroglyphs, though first of them were invented in Hittite-Luwian bilingualism. In 12th and 11th century{{_}}BC there was Bronze Age Collapse with lack of materials, since 10th century they appear again. About 7th century{{_}}BC hieroglyphs were replaced with [[pt:alphabet|alphabetic]] script and forgotten.\n\nAbout 500 hieroglyphs are known. Some hieroglyphs may mean not{{_}}just concept but syllable, but they are few.\n\nAbout 1800 hieroglyphs drew scholars’ attention, it was hypothesized that they are Hittite. In 1915 Luwian language was finally deciphered via [[ps:Xsux|cuneiform]], in 1930s first decipherments of hieroglyphs started to appear. Finally deciphered in 1973.

[Script.Hmng]
Name=Pahawh Hmong
Lang=languages of White and Green Hmongs
Note=stage one
Text=Shong Lue Yang, inventor of script, said that the script was given to him by God. “Pahawh” name means “unite”. Development lasted 1959 to 1971. Vietnam war was going on, Shong’s group was under suspicion by both communist and pro-American forces, and soon after script creation Shong was assassinated by pro-Americans.\n\nMost abugidas are “consonant-centric”. The central component of Pahawh is a vowel, and initial consonants are on the right of it. For example, word “hmong” {{sm|𖬌𖬣𖬵}} consists of vowel “oob”, consonant “qh” and a tack for tone.\n\nFour stages exist, the last was proposed just a month before assassination. Stages two and three are in use by different Hmong groups, and this block encodes all but initial.\n\nHmongs from the same clan are perceived to be like brothers and sisters, and should not do anything looking like relationships, even spend time alone together. As Hmongs lost their homeland, clan signs might be worn as badges, or drawn on doors. These characters have never been in wide use.

[Script.Hmnp]
Name=Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong (Chervang alphabet)
Lang=languages of White and Green Hmongs
Text=In 1970s Vietnamese and Lao Hmongs fled across countries, some settled in USA. There is an excellent film ''Gran Torino'' (2008) about destiny of an American Hmong.\n\nThe script was invented in 1980s by Chervang Kong, priest of one of American Evangelist churches. The church did active missionary work, and script spread across USA. Also used in Asia and Australia to a limited extent. Special signs are used for proper names instead of capital letters.

[Script.Hung]
Name=Old Hungarian (Székely) runes
Lang=Hungarian
Text=It’s unknown how Old Hungarian runes are related to [[ps:Orkh|Turkic]]: originated from them or sister scripts.\n\nIstvan{{_}}I, the first King of Hungary, united Hungarian tribes, turned to Christianity and switched to [[ps:Latn|Latin]] about 1000, but the use of runes continued, gradually declining. The last inscriptions are dated ≈1800.\n\nStudying started in the 18th century, the main work was conducted about 1900, and even new runes were made for the remaining phonemes of Hungarian. Hungarians are proud of runes and even duplicate signs sometimes, but few can read them: in 2017 some pranksters replaced sign of Érd town with “Szia” (“hi”, both words are 3 runes long), and that was noticed in a month.

[Script.Ital]
Name=Old Italic
Lang=Etruscan and other languages of Italy
Text=Old Italic alphabets were made from [[ps:Phnx|Phoenician]] and early [[ps:Grek|Greek]]. Later evolved to [[ps:Latn|Latin]].\n\nUnicode does{{_}}not{{_}}distinguish languages of Italy, [[pt:unification|unifying]] them to a single block{{-}}both left-to-right and right-to-left.

[Script.Java]
Name=Javanese
Lang=Javanese, small languages of Java
Text=Comes from [[ps:Kawi|Kawi]]. Inherent vowel is {{t|a}}. [[pt:virama|Virama]] sign is named “pangkon” and is a long hook rather than slanted dash. Javanese script is close to [[ps:Bali|Balinese]]. By mid-20th century the script has been completely supplanted with [[ps:Latn|Latin]]. Nowadays it’s used as ceremonial, as it is indeed beautiful.

[Script.Kali]
Name=Kayah Li
Lang=Kayah ''(=Red Karen, Myanmar)''
Text=Kayah Li comes from [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]], created by Htae Bu Phae in 1962 in response to spread of [[ps:Latn|Latin]]{{-}}but letters do{{_}}not{{_}}have inherent vowel, and this it is not{{_}}an{{_}}[[pt:abugida|abugida]]. Four vowels are written as separate letters, the rest as diacritics above {{sm|ꤢ}}. A few vowels from loanwords are written as diacritics above {{sm|ꤣ}}.\n\nKayah Li is an alphabet of refugees in many ways: in Thai refugee camps {{%|90}} of inhabitants are Karens that fled from atrociries of Myanmar military, and in near-prison conditions everything that unites is important. Karens are diverse group of peoples that includes Red, Black, White and others, by colour of national costume. Besides Kayah Li, their languages are written with [[ps:Thai|Thai]], Latin and [[ps:Mymr|Maynmar]].

[Script.Kana]
Name=Katakana
Lang=Japanese {{nspk|Hira}}
Text=About 3rd century Japanese started to write with [[ps:Hani|Chinese ideographs]]. Auxiliary syllabary of Man’yōgana emerged from ideographs, pronunciation rather than image mattered. Man’yōgana simplified to Katakana.\n\nKatakana is used for loanwords and initial teaching of foreigners. Before 1946 it had been used for writing word endings, nowadays it’s done with [[ps:Hira|Hiragana]].

[Script.Kawi]
Name=Kawi (old Javanese)
Lang=Sanskrit, old languages of Java: Balinese, Javanese, Sundanese, Malay
Text=Old script of [[ps:Brah|Brahmic]] origin, ancestor of [[ps:Java|Javanese]]. Comes from Pallava (early [[ps:Gran|Grantha]]). By 16th century it had been supplanted with other scripts.\n\nThere are several styles of Kawi suitable for different forms of writing: impressing on copper plates, writing with ink on palm leaves, carving in stone. The “standard” style of Kawi is taken from early copper plates, with some characters taken from later Kawi and redrawn to resemble early one.\n\nThere are no spaces, and the words that end with consonant are finished with [[pt:virama|virama]] (killer), a big hook. There’s also a virtual virama for consonant conjuncts{{-}}letters are stacked together.\n\nIndonesia uses [[ps:Latn|Latin]], and there’s an active community of people that use Kawi in modern correspondence. Blocks of [[ps:Bali|Balinese]] and [[ps:Java|Javanese]] were used. No{{_}}characters of modern Kawi were encoded, just some room was left.

[Script.Khar]
Name=Kharoshthi
Lang=Gandhari, Pali, Saka languages, Sanskrit
Text=Kharoshthi (Indobactrian, Kabul script) was used in Middle Asia and Afghanistan up to 3rd century. Originates from [[ps:Armi|Aramaic]], is considered sister script with [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]], no descendants. Has one of properties of [[pt:brahmic|Brahmic]] abugida{{-}}inherent vowel “a” is changed by vowel marks. [[pt:virama|Virama]] is purely virtual, final consonant is written as a subscript. Also about 30 [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] of double consonants are known:\n: ka {{sm|𐨐}} + i {{sm|◌𐨁}} = ki {{sm|𐨐𐨁}}\n: dha {{sm|𐨢}} + i {{sm|◌𐨁}} + ka {{sm|𐨐}} + virama {{sm|◌𐨿}} = dhik {{sm|&rlm;&#68130;&#68097;&#68112;&#68159;}}\n: ka {{sm|𐨐}} + virama {{sm|◌𐨿}} + ta {{sm|𐨟}} = kta {{sm|&rlm;&#68112;&#68159;&#68127;}}\n\nNon-positional numerals resembling Roman exist. Kharoshthi was discovered in 19th century and quickly deciphered.

[Script.Khmr]
Name=Khmer
Lang=Khmer ''(Cambodia, 16M as of 2007)''
Text=As other scripts of South-East Asia, comes from Pallava (early [[ps:Gran|Grantha]]). Became a base for [[ps:Thai|Thai]] and [[ps:Laoo|Lao]].\n\nThere are no spaces between words. There are two sets of consonants: one has inherent vowel {{t|a}}, the other has {{t|o}}. Vowel marks on these consonants also sound differently. Consonants ending with {{t|o}} are also used as final. Two [[pt:virama|viramas]] exist: one visible obsolete, the other is virtual for assembling consonant conjuncts: small second consonant is written under the first one. For example, autonym {{sm|ខ្មែរ}} is made of\n: {{sm|ខ}} {{sm|◌្}} {{sm|ម}} {{sm|◌ែ}} {{sm|រ}}

[Script.Khoj]
Name=Khojki
Lang=Kutchi, Sindhi ''(India)''
Text=Tradition states that Khojki was invented by Pir Sadardin (14th century) who was sent to India to spread Islam. By more down-to-earth version, it emerged in 16th century as a variant of Landa, very cursive [[ps:Shrd|Sharada]]. Used and studied even nowadays by Indian Shiites.\n\nBrahmic abugida with inherent vowel {{t|a}}, [[pt:virama|virama]] and four ligatures of consonant conjuncts, one of them for the lack of “ša” letter is written through nukta sign:\n: ka {{sm|𑈈}} + i {{sm|◌𑈭}} = ki {{sm|𑈈𑈭}}\n: ka {{sm|𑈈}} + virama {{sm|◌𑈵}} = k {{sm|𑈈𑈵}}\n: ta {{sm|𑈙}} + virama {{sm|◌𑈵}} + ra {{sm|𑈦}} = tra {{sm|𑈙𑈵𑈦}}&nbsp;&nbsp; (also “jnya” and “dra”)\n: ka {{sm|𑈈}} + virama {{sm|◌𑈵}} + sa {{sm|𑈩}} + nukta {{sm|◌𑈶}} = kša {{sm|𑈈𑈵𑈩𑈶}}\nVirama may look like slash {{sm|𑈈/}}. Digits resemble [[ps:Gujr|Gujarati]] and [[pt:unification|unified]] with it.

[Script.Kits]
Name=Khitan small script
Lang=Khitan ''(North-East China)''
Text=Was used in Liao empire (North-East China). Invented about 925 by a scholar named Yelü Diela and based on [[ps:Ougr|Uighur]]. Words are written in blocks of up to seven characters. As of 1987, among 378 known characters 125 are ideographs, 115 are phonetical, the rest are{{_}}not{{_}}deciphered.\n\nLarge and small script were used in parallel, small is simpler (large is purely ideographic). Khitan books did{{_}}not{{_}}survive, only utility objects and inscriptions on tombstones of noble people, the last{{-}}about 1200. In 1216 Khitans were finally defeated by Mongols and Chinese.\n\nMany fonts turn Khitan text 90° counterclockwise. This font shows hieroglyphs upright, like in book ''Daniel Kane. The Kitan Language and Script''. Because of copyright issues, icon shows one of characters from Khitan bronze mirror (traced by Professor Jǐng Yǒngshí), and the font is modern italic assembled by Google.\n\nThe last square looking like [[pt:tofu|tofu]] is illegible character. It forms blocks like the rest Khitan characters.

[Script.Knda]
Name=Kannada
Lang=Kannada
Note=separated from sister script [[ps:Telu|Telugu]]
Text=As most scripts of South-East Asia, came from [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]]. Inherent vowel is {{t|a}}, changed with vowel marks:\n: ka {{sm|ಕ}} + i {{sm|◌ಿ}} = ki {{sm|ಕಿ}}\n[[pt:virama|Virama]] (“remove vowel” sign) appears in writing for Sanskrit only. In computers virama is used for typing consonant conjunct [[pt:ligature|ligatures]]:\n: ka {{sm|ಕ}} + virama {{sm|◌್}} + ta {{sm|ತ}} = kta {{sm|ಕ್ತ}}\nOften used in smilies: <font face='{{fontface}},Cambria' size='+3'>ಠ͜ಠ</font>.

[Script.Krai]
Name=Kirat Rai
Lang=Bantawa
Text=Invented by Mahaguru Tika Ram Rai from local scrips close to [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]]. In 1995 Indian state of Sikkim recognized Bantawa (under the name of ''Rai'' though it’s a broader ethnic group, and ''Kirat'' is even broader) and made Kirat the official script.\n\nThough it’s a Brahmic abugida, it has no [[pt:ligature|ligatures]], marks on marks and other complex rendering, all characters are ordinary [[pt:spacing|spacing]]. Punctuation sign ''danda'' is slanted to distinguish from {{t|ā}}, so the script use its own danda rather than common Indic from Devanagari.

[Script.Kthi]
Name=Kaithi
Lang=Hindi, small languages of India
Text=The name comes from Kayastha caste of office workers. It is in fact a very [[pt:cursive|cursive]] variant of [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]]. Kaithi was used in Mughal period in North-East India, was recognized in courts, and in 1950–1954 was the official legal script. Wider use was expected, but the script was opposed by Brahmins, and modern Hindus can barely read Kaithi.\n\nDigits look like Devanagari, except 5 and 9, and [[pt:unification|unified]] with it.

[Script.Lana]
Name=Tai Tham (Lanna)
Lang=Yuan (=Northern Tai, =Lanna), Tai Lü, Khün, all{{-}}Thailand
Text=Comes from Nothern Thai kingdom of Lanna or Lannathai (1296–1558). Then it was conquered by Burma, and in 1774 it was taken over by Siam (Thailand). Siam was multicultural, but since failed 1912 coup the king started to promote nationalism. In 1933 nationalists took power and destroyed many specimen of Tai Tham.\n\nLike in other similar scripts, round letters come from writing on palm leaves (straight line will cut the leaf by veins). Inherent vowel is {{t|a}}. There are no spaces between words. There are two types of vowels: independent and vowel marks. No [[pt:virama|virama]], there is a similar character for assembling syllabes instead:\n: high ha {{sm|ᩉ}} + i {{sm|◌ᩥ}} + sakot {{sm|◌᩠}} + na {{sm|ᨶ}} = hin {{sm|ᩉᩥ᩠ᨶ}}\n\nHas two sets of digits: Hora (daily) and Tham (sacred).\n\nThere are several million people speaking Yuan, but since 20th century few are literate in Lanna, [[ps:Thai|Thai]] is used more often. Only small Khün language {{nspk|kkh}} uses Tai Tham as primary script.

[Script.Laoo]
Name=Lao
Lang=Lao ''(native for 3M and second for 4M in Laos, >20M more in Thailand use [[ps:Thai|Thai script]])''
Text=Lao script was standardized in 14th century. Like [[ps:Thai|Thai]], originated from [[ps:Khmr|Khmer]]. After reform conducted by communists in 1960, inherent vowel and [[pt:virama|virama]] disappeared, and Lao retained the last sign of abugida{{-}}complex rules of writing vowels: {{sm|ເກົ້າ}} ''kao'' “nine”. Lao language is tonal, and we see here both vowel mark of three (!) characters and tone above {{sm|ກ}} consonant. Many vowel marks are ordinary [[pt:spacing|spacing]] characters for historical reasons.\n\nThere are no spaces between words. Like in Thai, letters are [[pt:acrophonic|acrophonic]], that is named with suitable words: {{sm|ບ}} is “bo-be” or just “be” (goat). Letter {{sm|ຣ}} (r) became silent or turned to “L” and disappeared from orthography, remaining for foreign names only.\n\nBuddhism uses Pali as religious language, several additional letters and virama are used to write that language.\n\nUnicode uses a dotted circle for empty place under mark. Laos traditionally use X mark that’s absent in Unicode. Sometimes [[ps:Latn|Latin]] “x” is used instead.

[Script.Latn]
Name=Latin
Lang=Spanish {{nspk|es}}, English {{nspk}}; most languages of Western and Turkic world (including East Europe, Baltic, Moldova), Sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania; Vietnamese, Karelian, Kurdish, Esperanto
Text=Latin alphabet is [[ps:Grek|Ancient Greek]] script adapted about 700{{_}}BC for writing [[ps:Ital|Etruscan]] languages that later became Latin.\n\nIn Middle Ages letters J, V and W were added to Latin. [[pt:minuscule|Minuscule]] writing invented for economy of expensive parchment turned to small letters.\n\nLatin language is dead long ago, but wide territory of Roman Empire, missionary work of Vatican and Age of Discovery mostly done by Western world turned Latin to world’s alphabet #1. Latin is used in mathematics, medicine, phonetics, programming.\n\nAzerbaijan, Moldova, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan adopted Latin with fall of the USSR.

[Script.Lepc]
Name=Lepcha (Róng)
Lang=Lepcha
Text=Comes from [[ps:Tibt|Tibetan]] and initially was written top-down. Later horizontal writing was adopted, so letters look like Tibetan rotated 90°. According to traditions, the script was invented about 1700 by Buddhist missionaries, and adopted by Chakdor Namgyal, Prince of Sikkim (ruled 1700–1717). The first printed text is the Gospel of Matthew, 1845.\n\nInherent vowel is {{t|a}}. Initial vowels do{{_}}not{{_}}have special shape, instead they are affixed to null letter looking like ampersand. No [[pt:virama|virama]]. Instead to get a syllable of three phonemes, first vowel mark is added, then final consonant. There are no spaces between words.

[Script.Limb]
Name=Limbu
Lang=Limbu {{nspk}}, Sanskrit, Pali
Text=According to tradition, the script was invented in 9th century by King Sirijunga and revived eight centuries later by scholar with the same who is considered King’s reincarnation. More down-to-earth version states that it comes from [[ps:Lepc|Lepcha]] and cannot be so ancient.\n\nInherent vowel is {{t|ɔ}}.\n\nInitial vowels do{{_}}not{{_}}have special shape, but are instead written with “null” consonant {{sm|ᤀ}} looking like Nepal flag. To get a syllable of three phonemes, first vowel mark is added, then final consonant: {{sm|ᤐᤳᤗᤥ}} {{t|pɔtlo}}. Underscore-like [[pt:virama|virama]] is used in loadwords for letters that do not have final form, and sometimes in syllables with long vowel {{sm|ᤁᤁ᤻}} {{t|kɔ:k}}.

[Script.Lina]
Name=Linear A
Lang=presumably Minoan
Text=The script was used in islands of Cyprus and Cyclades. Most inscriptions are business-related and written on clay. Writings with ink on vessels and other objects also exist. But shape of signs suggests that the script was written with ink on leather or other soft material. About 1450{{_}}BC, with invasion of Greeks, it was supplanted with [[ps:Linb|Linear B]].\n\nArthur Evans found the script in late 19th century, and part of artifacts perished{{-}}some were thrown by untrained workmen, some were destroyed with rain at the warehouse. He called the script linear becuse it was made of lines, unlike earlier Cretan hieroglyphs (absent in Unicode). He delayed publication of discovery hoping to decipher on his own, until his death in 1941. There is no comprehensive decipherment{{-}}unlike later Linear B.

[Script.Linb]
Name=Linear B
Lang=Mycenaean ''(proto-Greek)''
Text=The moment of conquest of Crete by Greeks is known rather precisely, 1450{{_}}BC. [[ps:Lina|Linear A]] started to fall from use.\n\nCurly shape of characters suggests that they were written on leather or papyrus, furthermore Linear A was actually written with ink. But all survived specimen are written on clay tablets that were burned in fires and preserved for millennia. The script was used by narrow caste of scribes that adhered to grammar of Minoan language rather than Greek. All known inscriptions are business documents: rental contracts, lists of craftsmen, property inventories…\n\nDiscovered in early 20th century by Arthur Evans. Deciphered in 1950s.

[Script.Lisu]
Name=Lisu (Fraser alphabet)
Lang=Lisu
Text=The alphabet was invented by Myanmar preacher Sara Ba Thaw and British missionary James Fraser. Consists of capital [[ps:Latn|Latin]] letters, both upright and turned. There are no small letters. Due to missionaries’ efforts {{%|40}} of Lisu are protestants. China recognized the script in 1992.\n\nThere were other attempts to teach Lisu write: syllabic script resembling [[ps:Hani|Chinese ideographs]] (≈1925), Pinyin-based (Latin transliteration of Chinese) Latin (1957), [[ps:Plrd|Pollard alphabet]] (Miao) and [[ps:Mymr|Myanmar]]-based script.

[Script.Lyci]
Name=Lycian
Lang=Lycian ''(Anatolia)''
Text=The alphabet was invented under influence of [[ps:Phnx|Phoenician]] and [[ps:Grek|Greek]]. So recemblance to Greek is deceiving: some letters are Phoenician. Supplanted with Greek about 3rd century{{_}}BC when Lycia was conquered by Alexander the Great.\n\nLycia is a Greek name rather than autonym. The autonym of language is ''trm̃mili''.\n\nDeciphered in early 20th century.

[Script.Lydi]
Name=Lydian (Sardian)
Lang=Lydian ''(=Sardian, Anatolia)''
Text=The alphabet is close to [[ps:Lyci|Lycian]], comes from [[ps:Phnx|Phoenician]]. Supplanted with [[ps:Grek|Greek]] about 3rd century{{_}}BC, when Lydia was conquered by Alexander the Great.\n\nEarly inscriptions were in both directions, late ones right-to-left only. The unique feature is a triangular quote.\n\nLydia is{{_}}not{{_}}autonym, Lydians named the region by Sardis, its capital.\n\nDeciphered in 1916 and well-explored despite small number of inscriptions (only 109 as of 1986).

[Script.Mahj]
Name=Mahajani
Lang=Hindi, Punjabi, Marwari ''(North India)''
Text=One more remainder of Indian caste system, like [[ps:Kthi|Kaithi]]: this script was used by bankers and accountants until the 20th century, and is currently in extremely small use.\n\nScript degraded almost to [[pt:abjad|consonant]]: consonant letter means {{t|ka}}, and {{t|ki}}, and {{t|k}}. If a vowel is important, there are special signs. No [[pt:virama|viramas]] and [[pt:ligature|ligatures]]. On the other hand, there are many abbreviations and fractions important for accounting books. Many of them are badly explored and haven’t been yet encoded.\n\nHeadstrokes are attested in headings only. Digits looking like [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]] and [[ps:Gujr|Gujarati]] were sighted; in Unicode they are [[pt:unification|unified]] with the former.

[Script.Maka]
Name=Makasar (bird script)
Lang=Makasar ''(south Sulavesi)''
Text=Comes from [[ps:Kawi|Kawi]] (old Javanese). Named “bird script” after shape of letters. There are arguments when the script appeared, but it’s{{_}}not{{_}}ancient: known form is suited for quill and paper rather than palm leaves. The first known specimen is signature on treaty with Dutch East India Company (1667).\n\nBrahmic abugida consisting of 17 consonants, without [[pt:virama|virama]]. Initial letter is {{sm|𑻱}} (maybe with vowel marks). Final consonants, {{t|m}}, {{t|nn}} and glottal stop, are omitted. No{{_}}spaces, words and phrases are divided with vertical ellipsis. With such functionality the script is clearly incomplete{{-}}and by 19th century in had been completely supplanted with [[ps:Bugi|Lontara]] that’s considered a sister script.\n\nBoth European and Arabic-Indic digits are attested. In one of manuscripts there’s a punctuation mark resembling a palm-tree, [[pt:unification|unified]] with {{em|🌴}} [[pt:emoji|emoji]].\n\n''Angka'' sign means “same consonant”: {{sm|𑻧𑻴𑻲}} duda, {{sm|𑻧𑻲𑻴}} dadu.<br>\nTwo identical syllables are even simpler: {{sm|𑻧𑻴𑻴}} dudu.

[Script.Mand]
Name=Mandaic
Lang=Mandaic ''(Iran and Iraq)''
Text=Came from [[ps:Armi|Aramaic]] or [[ps:Prti|Parthian]] script. Used by so-called “marsh Arabs” that live near confluence of Tigris and Euphrates and profess Mandaeism, unusual Gnostic religion. Their number in Iraq is greatly reducing from {{n|45000}} (1996) to {{n|5000}} (2007), {{n|60000}} more are spread across the world, and probably as refugees they will quickly disappear.

[Script.Mani]
Name=Manichaean
Lang=Sogdian, Parthian, Middle Persian
Text=Comes from [[ps:Syrc|Syriac]] script and is closely related to religion of Manichaeism. When Sasanid Persia expelled Manichaeans about 300, the specimen started to appear to the north, in Middle Asia. Last inscriptions are dated 10th century and are found in modern Xinjian Region.\n\nLetters are joined, like in Syriac.\n\nThe term was introduced by Friedrich Müller, who read the script in 1903.

[Script.Marc]
Name=Marchen
Lang=Zhang-Zhung ''(Tibet)'', Tibetan (in ''Bon'' religion)
Text=Zhang-Zhung is a Sino-Tibetan language that died in 10th century, it was written with minimum of five scripts. Unicode has only Marchen, the rest are not even [[pt:unification|unified]]. Probably all these scripts were only in religious use. It’s unknown how they wrote in everyday life.\n\nIn syllables several letters are stacked together, and vowel marks relate to lower of them, even if affixed to the top: spyir {{sm|𑲍𑲞𑲩𑲱𑲊}}{{-}}Tibetan “general”. No [[pt:virama|virama]].\n\nNowadays it’s used in ''Bön'', Tibetan para-Buddhist religion that came from early Buddhism (do{{_}}not{{_}}confuse with actual Tibetan Buddhism). Left-hand swastika became the symbol of ''Bön''.

[Script.Medf]
Name=Medefaidrin (Obɛri Ɔkaimɛ)
Lang=Obɛri Ɔkaimɛ/Medefaidrin ''(Nigeria)''
Text=Constructed language and script for it were created by Michael Ukpong and Akpan Akpan Udofia about 1931 in Nigerian para-Christian church ''Obɛri Ɔkaimɛ''. Words are constructed, grammar is a mixture of English and Ibibio, the local language. Numerals are positional base-20, reflect counting habits of Ibibio. Punctuation marks are original.\n\nNew language was used in liturgy, taught in school. This violated local education law, the school was oppressed and fined, and teaching was ceased. Several manuscripts remain, all are in bad condition. Scholars discovered Medefaidrin in 1947. About 4000 Obɛri exist today, but few know the language. Nigerian authorities are heavily exploring the language and scanning remaining documents.

[Script.Mend]
Name=Mende Kikakui
Lang=Mende
Text=The script was invented by Islamic preacher Mohamed Turay. Initial script of 42 characters was an [[pt:abugida|abugida]], but with additions made by his pupils it lost consistency. Named after first three syllables. Also a non-positional numeral system came into script.\n\nWas widely used in early 20th century, but later Mende adopted [[ps:Latn|Latin]]. There are several hundreds of modern (2010s) people literate in Kikakui.

[Script.Merc]
Name=Meroitic cursive
Lang=Meroitic, maybe Ancient Nubian
Text=Meroitic script was used in Nubia and Sudan for writing local languages until 7th century. Has two forms, hieroglyphic and cursive. Hieroglyphic form comes from [[ps:Egyp|Egyptian hieroglyphs]] and was written right-to-left in columns; only inscriptions carved on monuments are known. Cursive is derived from Demotic script and was written right-to-left, {{%|90}} of all inscriptions.\n\nMore than 2000 inscripitons exist. The alphabet was deciphered in early 20th century via Meroitic pronunciation of Egyptian names. But the language is still unclear.

[Script.Mero]
Name=Meroitic hieroglyphs
Lang=Meroitic; maybe Ancient Nubian

[Script.Mlym]
Name=Malayalam
Lang=Malayalam {{nspk}}, [[ps:Tutg|Tulu]] {{nspk|Tutg}}, Sanskrit
Text=Comes from [[ps:Gran|Grantha]]. Inherent vowel is {{t|a}}. Curly letters prevent palm leaf from cutting along veins.\n\nThe first printed book (Rome, 1772) had about 1000 different glyphs. In 1971 a spelling reform was conducted that turned them into 250 in print and 90 on typewriter{{-}}vowel marks and {{t|r}} were detached from letters, frequent consonant conjuncts became left-to-right rather than top-down, rare ones just use [[pt:virama|virama]].\n: ka {{sm|ക}} + i {{sm|◌ി}}{{_}}{{_}}= ki {{sm|കി}}\n: ka {{sm|ക}} + virama {{sm|◌്}} = k {{sm|ക്}}\n: ta {{sm|ത}} + virama {{sm|◌്}} + ka {{sm|ക}} = tka {{sm|ത്ക}}\n: ka {{sm|ക}} + virama {{sm|◌്}} + ka {{sm|ക}} = kka {{sm|ക്ക}}\n: kа {{sm|ക}} + virama {{sm|◌്}} + rа {{sm|ര}} = kra {{sm|ക്ര}}\n\n''Chillu'' letters carry built-in virama, some of them originate from different letters: for emample, L{{-}}from letter “ta”. Five of them (NN, N, R, LL, LL) are in modern use, and four (K, M, Y, LLL) are [[pt:obsolete|obsolete]].\n\nSpelling reforms are seldom embraced; everyday writing and film posters continued to use old orthography. Pre-Unicode fonts further spread new orthography. Microsoft, Apple and Google made Unicode fonts in new orthography, but local vendors do in old one as well. Since late 2010s printed media started to return to old orthography. In 2022 the reform was partly reverted, more subscripts were added. ''Unicodia'' uses Google’s font.

[Script.Modi]
Name=Modi
Lang=Marathi
Text=The script is relative to [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]] but is significantly more [[pt:cursive|cursive]]. There are two standard theories of origin: Hemādri Paṇḍit, diplomat and minister (about 1260), and Khanderao Ballal, diplomat (about 1700). Was used together with Devanagari until 1950s, then ''Balbodh'' (literally “understood by children”), cursive style of Devanagari existing at least since 1800 was declared the standard script for Marathi. Revival of Modi started in 21st century.\n\nHead-line is usually ruled before writing, and spaces are barely seen. In conjuncts one of consonants (usually first) is just reduced. There are only two consonant conjunct [[pt:ligature|ligatures]], {{t|ksə}} and {{t|trə}}.\n: kə {{sm|𑘎}} + virama {{sm|◌𑘿}} + tə {{sm|𑘝}} = ktə {{sm|𑘎𑘿𑘝}}\n: kə {{sm|𑘎}} + virama {{sm|◌𑘿}} + rə {{sm|𑘨}} = krə {{sm|𑘎𑘿𑘨}}\nBut methods of affixing vowel marks are rather bizarre and form ligatures for themselves: \n: gə {{sm|𑘐}} + ū {{sm|◌𑘴}} = gū {{sm|𑘐𑘴}}\n[[pt:virama|Virama]] is never used in Marathi. Lower sign looking like virama is actually a ligature with {{t|r}}:\n: kə {{sm|𑘎}} + rə {{sm|𑘨}} = kərə {{sm|𑘎𑘨}}

[Script.Mong]
Name=Mongolian (old)
Lang=Mongolian
Note=1204 (old), 1648 (Todo Bichig)
Text=In 1204 Mongols conquered Uyghurs and took [[ps:Ougr|alphabet]] originating from [[ps:Syrc|Syriac]]. The only actual script written left-to-right in columns, so computers support it reluctantly, turning columns 90° counter-clockwise.\n\nIn 1587 scholar Ayuush Güüsh reformed the script, and also added several characters for simplifying transcription of Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese important in Buddhism. New characters were named ''Ali-gali'' or ''Galik''.\n\nIn Russia the script was used by Buryats. After WW2 Mongols adopted [[ps:Cyrl|Cyrillic]], with collapse of the USSR there are plans for extending the use of old script.<br>\nContains homographs (for example, {{sm|ᠣ}}={{t|o/u}}), but vowel harmony{{-}}the word may contain either masculine or feminine vowels only{{-}}often disambiguates those homographs. Unicode has separate codepoints for these homographs: {{sm|ᠡᠨᠳᠡ}} ={{_}}ENDE {{t|ent}} here, {{sm|ᠠᠳᠠ}} ={{_}}ADA {{t|ada}} demon. Letters Q and G have distinct forms in masculine and feminine words, not{{_}}just before vowels, but in the end of word too, so fonts have multiple rules for this: {{sm|ᠵᠠᠷᠯᠢᠭ}} {{t|ǰarlig}} ={{_}}JARLIG order, {{sm|ᠴᠡᠷᠢᠭ}} ={{_}}ČERIG {{t|'ʦʰerek}} soldier.\n\nThis block also contains Todo Bichig ''(“clear script”)'' invented in 1648 and used by western peoples including Kalmyks until their cyrillization in 1924. Todo is still in use in Xinjiang ''(China)''.

[Script.Mroo]
Name=Mro
Lang=Mro {{nspk||=Mru}}
Text=Most Mro are Buddhists, and authorities of Bangladesh, an Islamic country, do{{_}}not{{_}}want to support them.\n\nMro script was invented in 1980s by Menlay Murang, founder of ''Krama'' religion. In 2000s Murang alphabet became popular end even surpassed [[ps:Latn|Latin]], the previous script: more than {{%|80}} Mro are literate in it. Also existing Latin badly conveyed Mro phonetics.\n\nThere are no technical difficulties: writing left-to-right, no [[pt:format|format]] characters and [[pt:combining|combining marks]], [[pt:abc|alphabetical order]] corresponds to encoding, line wrapping rules are standard. Punctuation is European, with addition of local version of ''danda'' bar.

[Script.Mtei]
Name=Meetei Mayek (Manipuri)
Lang=Manipuri
Text=By widespread opinion, the script emerged in 11th century. In 18th century [[ps:Beng|Bengali]] was adopted. In 1930s the script was revived, in 1976 adjusted to modern phonetics.\n\nLetters are named after body parts: the first is “kok” (head). Inherent vowel is {{t|ə}}. [[pt:virama|Virama]] is purely virtual and is used for assembly of old [[pt:ligature|ligatures]]: a single consonant is indicated with reduced letters.\n: kə {{sm|ꯀ}} + i {{sm|◌ꯤ}} = ki {{sm|ꯀꯤ}}\n: k {{sm|ꯛ}}

[Script.Mult]
Name=Multani
Lang=Siraiki, Sindhi, Punjabi ''(Pakistan, India)''
Text=Siraiki are almost all Muslims. As of 2010s they number 14…19M by different sources in Pakistan only.\n\nThe script emerged in 18th century. The first printed source is New Testament of 1819. In late 19th century British administration invented [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] script, and by 20th century Siraiki adopted it.\n\nAll sources consider Multani script a Brahmic abugida, but in fact it degraded to [[pt:abjad|consonant]]: no vowel marks, vowels are written extremely selectively. Digits are [[pt:unification|unified]] with [[ps:Guru|Gurmukhi]]: there’s minor difference in 6 and 7.

[Script.Mymr]
Name=Myanmar
Lang=Myanmar {{nspk}}, Mon {{nspk|mnw}}, Pali ''(dead, liturgical in Buddhism)''…
Text=Like most other scripts of South-East Asia, comes from [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]]. In open syllables inherent vowel is {{t|a}}, often reduces to {{t|ə}}. In closed syllables it depends on final consonant: {{sm|နှစ်}} {{t|n̥iʔ}} “year”. To set another vowel, vowel marks are used, to remove{{-}}[[pt:virama|virama]] sign, “a-sat” in Myanmar. Another virtual virama is used just for assembling [[pt:ligature|ligatures]]{{-}}two letters stacked together.\n\nEarly Myanmar script was square. It became round about 17th century when writing on palm leaves became widespread: straight line could cut a leaf along veins.

[Script.Nagm]
Name=Nag alphabet (Mundari)
Lang=Mundari
Text=Non-written Austro-Asian (not Indo-European) language. According to 2011 census, 1.1{{_}}million people in India speak Mundari and 500{{_}}thousand more speak some ''Munda''{{-}}it’s unknown whether it is the same language.\n\nWriting systems are [[ps:Orya|Odia]], [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]], [[ps:Beng|Bengali]], [[ps:Latn|Latin]]{{-}}but phonemes are exotic for Latin, and abugidas badly suit Austro-Asian languages. No wonder Rohidas Singh Nag invented a new alphabet in 1949, and it even took root. About 1982 he shortened the alphabet to 27 characters and showed to local authorities, and reformed in 2008.\n\nDigits are own. Punctuation is European.

[Script.Nand]
Name=Nandinagari
Lang=Sanskrit, Kannada ''(South India)''
Text=Comes from Nagari, intermediate form of Indic script. Sister to [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]], “Nandinagari” means “from sacred city”. If they weren’t different{{-}}broken headstroke, other [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] and digits{{-}}Nandi could have been a variation of Devanagari. The script was used until 19th century.\n\nInherent vowel is {{t|a}}, replaced with vowel [[pt:combining|marks]]. All marks, including [[pt:virama|virama]], are stuck to letters. Virama serves for Sanskrit only: Kannada prefers open syllables, and rare consonant conjuncts are conveyed with ligatures.\n: ka {{sm|𑦮}} + u {{sm|◌𑧔}} = ku {{sm|𑦮𑧔}}\n: ṭa {{sm|𑦸}} + u {{sm|◌𑧔}} = ṭu {{sm|𑦸𑧔}}\n: ka {{sm|𑦮}} + virama {{sm|◌𑧠}} + ta {{sm|𑦽}} = kta {{sm|𑦮𑧠𑦽}}\nDigits resemble [[ps:Knda|Kannada]] (there are differences in 2 and 6) and [[pt:unification|unified]] with it.

[Script.Narb]
Name=Old North Arabian
Lang=Old Arabic of oases, Safaitic, Hismaitic and others
Text=The term “Old North Arabian” refers to all South Semitic scripts except [[ps:Sarb|South Arabian]]. Comes from Proto-Sinaitic script. Known for short inscriptions of 3rd century{{_}}BC to 4th century, but the script it much more ancient; maybe 8th century BC.

[Script.Nbat]
Name=Nabataean
Lang=Nabataean
Text=Comes from [[ps:Armi|Aramaic]]. The language was in use in Nabataea (the capital is Petra in modern Jordan) since 2nd century{{_}}BC. In 106 Trajan annexed Nabataea to Roman Empire, and the script existed until 6th century, and probably evolved to [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] via badly-explored New Sinai script. There are no spaces between words. Numbers were written right-to left using non-positional system resembling Roman.

[Script.Newa]
Name=Newa (Prachalit)
Lang=Bhasa {{nspk||=Newa}}, Sanskrit, Pali
Note=first evidence
Text=Origins are unknown, different styles of script existed since 10th century. The first evidence: Nepal king Pratap Malla wrote “Newara script” in 1654. Actually survived specimen are from 18th century. In 1905 Nepal dictators of Rana dynasty banned language and script. In 1951 India invaded, expelled usurpers, put old Shah dynasty and allowed again. Since 1960 kings dismissed parliament and restarted nationalist policy, banning everything except Hundiusm and Nepali written in [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]], but due to economic troubles extended democracy about 1989.\n\nClassic Brahmic abugida. Despite multiple [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] made of small consonants, [[pt:virama|virama]] occurs sometimes.\n{{smtable|ka|*𑐎|+ i|**◌𑐶|= ki|*𑐎𑐶}}\n{{smtable|ka|*𑐎|+ virama|**◌𑑂|= k|*𑐎𑑂}}\n{{smtable|ka|*𑐎|+ virama|**◌𑑂|+ ta|*𑐟|= kta|*𑐎𑑂𑐟}}

[Script.Nkoo]
Name=N’Ko
Lang=Manding languages
Text=The alphabet was invented in 1949 by Guinean writer Solomana Kante. In 1950s someone from Soviet Bloc made two N’Ko typewriters for Solomana. Used mainly in Guinea, Ivory Coast and Mali. “N’Ko” means “I say”. Letters are joined together.\n\nDifferent languages of Manding group use [[ps:Latn|Latin]] and [[ps:Arab|Arabic]], but N’Ko is more widespread. Literary form of Manding languages is also named N’Ko.

[Script.Nshu]
Name=Nüshu
Lang=one of Xiang dialects ''(Hunan, China)''
Note=900 (presumably), 1300 (proved for sure)
Text=Nüshu existed for centuries and was used as women’s script: men were trained in [[ps:Hani|literacy]], and women used simpler syllabic script. Unlike sweeping ideographs, Nüshu was written with a thin sliver. Many of Nüshu specimen are ''third day missives'': a girl departs to another village to marry, and her sisters and friend girls embroid wishes to her, often in poetry.\n\nDespite common misconception, Nüshu was not{{_}}a{{_}}cipher; men just considered it “low” script. The first known specimen was made in early 20th century, but shape of characters states that Nüshu existed in 1300.\n\nUnlike Japanese [[ps:Hira|Hiragana]] of similar use, Nüshu remained unofficial script. Campaigns against illiteracy and spread of sewing machines in 20th century put Nüshu to decline. Japanese invaders banned Nüshu seeing a cipher in it, and Red Guards during Cultural Revolution destroyed antique things, including embroideries.\n\nNüshu was discovered again in 1980s. Yang Huanyi, the last woman proficient in Nüshu, died in 2004 in age of 98{{-}}after her Nüshu was known by scholars only. Embroideries with Nüshu became a populat tourist souvenir; there are concerns that tourism will distort an ancient script.\n\nAbout 1800 characters are known, but most mean the same syllable.\n\n''Unicodia'' uses ''Noto Sans Nushu'' font. The main typographer is a lady{{-}}Lisa Huang, a Frenchwoman of Chinese origin.

[Script.Ogam]
Name=Ogham
Lang=Old Irish, Pictish
Text=Ogham alphabet was used by ancient Celts and Picts of Ireland and Britain in 4–10th centuries. In parallel [[ps:Latn|Latin]] was in use, so there’s an opinion that it’s steganography (concealed writing). The script is designed for notches on planks and sticks. Inscriptions start with {{sm|᚛}} and end with {{sm|᚜}}.\n\nOgham space is the only space in Unicode that draws something. Otherwise it’s a normal space, and you can wrap along it.

[Script.Olck]
Name=Ol Chiki
Lang=Santali
Text=The alphabet was invented in 1925 by Raghunath Murmu. [[ps:Beng|Bengali]], [[ps:Orya|Odia]] and [[ps:Latn|Latin]] were used before, though most of population was illiterate. Santali language is not{{_}}Indo-European but Austro-Asian, and Brahmi-based alphabets suit badly. For example, voiced and voiceless consonants replace each other during word inflection, and there’s no sense in distinguishing them.\n\nOl Chiki consists of 30 letters, names correspond to look. First three: {{sm|ᱚ}}{{_}}fire, {{sm|ᱛ}}{{_}}earth, {{sm|ᱜ}}{{_}}vomit.

[Script.Onao]
Name=Ol Onal
Lang=Bhumij
Text=Small Austroasiatic language from Munda group, relative of [[ps:Nagm|Mundari]] and [[ps:Olck|Santali]].\n\nThe script was invented by Mahendra Nath Sardar. In 1992 Bhumij community held a contest for a new script, and it was already done, and won the contest among three entrants. Capital letters were called ''Ol onal'', and small ''Galang onal'', but small letters were quickly dropped.\n\nPunctuation marks are [[pt:ascii|ASCII]], plus ''danda'' bar from [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]]. Double danda is not attested.

[Script.Orkh]
Name=Old Turkic (Orkhon-Yenisei) runes
Lang=Orkhon Turkic, Yenisei Kyrgyz and others ''(moden Mongolia, Baikal coast, Xinjiang Uygur Region)''
Text=Russian explorers started to collect information back under Peter the Great (early 18th century), the inscriptions were compared to [[ps:Runr|Germanic runes]]. Futhermore, Swedes imprisoned after Battle of Poltava actually helped Daniel Messerschmidt. Finns were quick to attribute runes to their ancestors.\n\nDanish scientist Vilhelm Thomsen deciphered script in 1893 and confounded Finns: that’s Turkic text.\n\nAbout 200 inscriptions of 7–10th centuries are known, and several manuscripts of 9–10th centuries. Second Turkic Khaganate was 682–744, Uyghur Khaganate 744–840. After defeat to Yenisei Kyrghyz, Uyghurs went south and were conquered by [[ps:Tang|Tanguts]] in 1030. The story of Kyrghyz is vague; it’s well-known that they submitted to Genghis Khan in 13th century.\n\nGlyph {{sm|𐱇}} was changed in autumn 2021.

[Script.Orya]
Name=Odia (Oriya)
Lang=Odia {{nspk||=Oriya}}
Text=Odia or Oriya (traditionally but inaccurately considered relative to ''Aryans'') evolved from [[ps:Sidd|Siddham]], script with broken headstroke, through Gaudi (also ''proto-[[ps:Beng|Bengali]]'', ''proto-Oriya'').\n\nBy widespread opinion, letters got round shape because of writing on palm leaves{{-}}to prevent the leaf from cutting along veins, headstroke became an arc. This arc is larger than main elements of letter, that’s why letters are hard to distinguish. The earliest known leaf is from 15th century.\n\nInherent vowel is {{t|ɔ}}, removed with [[pt:virama|virama]] sign: {{sm|କ}}=kɔ, {{sm|କି}}=ki, {{sm|କ୍}}=k. In Odia language, unlike other Indic, this vowel is never removed by itself, without virama. But virama is infrequent because of multiple consonant conjunct ligatures: {{sm|ମ+◌୍+ଭ=ମ୍ଭ}}{{_}}mbhɔ.\n\nPunctuation signs are ''danda'' bar from [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]] block used as full stop and surrounded with spaces, and ordinary European.

[Script.Osge]
Name=Osage
Lang=Osage ''(Native American language of Siouan family)''
Text=The script was invented in 2006 by Herman Mongrain Lookout for Osage language (under revival, the last native speaker died in 2005, several dozens of second-language speakers remain). He discovered that students transferred English orthography to American language. [[ps:Latn|Latin]] was taken as a base, but greatly modified. European digits and punctuation are used.\n\nSince 2012, when work on bringing into Unicode commenced, the script was reformed.

[Script.Osma]
Name=Osmanya (Somalian)
Lang=Somalian
Text=Invented about 1920 by Osman Yusuf Kenadid, brother of Sultan Ali Yusuf Kenadid. The script got some acceptance in Somalia, though competition with newly-imported [[ps:Latn|Latin]] and traditional [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] was great.\n\nIn 1961 Osmanya became the official script together with Latin. In 1972 dictator Mohammed Barre banned Osmanya, firstly because of spread of typewriters.\n\nBecause of unstable situation in Somalia, there is no modern data.

[Script.Ougr]
Name=Old Uyghur
Lang=Old Uyghur, East Uyghur
Text=Old Uyghur script is an intermediate stage between [[ps:Sogd|Sogdian]] and [[ps:Mong|Mongolian]] script. Sogdians wrote right to left greatly turning text to the left, hence writing left to right in columns. It also became intermediate in type, part of vowels got their letters. The script was used in Xinjiang until 18th century.\n\nModern scholars alro write Uyghur right to left, hence encoding model.

[Script.Palm]
Name=Palmyrene
Lang=Palmyrene Aramaic
Text=The script was used since 100{{_}}BC until 300{{_}}CE around Palmyra (modern Syria). Comes from [[ps:Armi|Aramaic]]. The alphabet has 22 consonants, one of them has two variants. There are no spaces and punctuation. Numbers were written with non-positional system resembling Roman numerals, right to left.\n\nDeciphered in 1754 using a bilingual with [[ps:Grek|Greek]], Jean-Jacques Barthélemy was the first person to decipher an extinct alphabet. In 1758 he deciphers [[ps:Phnx|Phoenician]].

[Script.Pauc]
Name=Pau Cin Hau
Lang=Tedim (=Zomi) and other northern Kuki-Chin languages ''(Myanmar)''
Note=1902 (initial ideographic), 1931 (alphabetical)
Text=The script was invented by Tedim man Pau Cin Hau (1859–1948), founder of a new religion. The religion was called ''Laipian'', “script religion”. First the script was ideographic, then alphabetical. The script has consonants R, F, Ch and some tones missing in Tedim, so Pau Cin Hau intended to make a script for all Kuki-Chin languages.\n\nLater the script was retaken by Christians, and it is still in limited use by Tedim {{nspk}}, together with [[ps:Latn|Latin]]. Cousin languages are written exclusively with Latin.

[Script.Perm]
Name=Old Permic (Komi Zyryan, Anbur)
Lang=Komi Zyryan, Komi Permyak
Text=The Old Permic script was proposed in 1372 by missionary Stephen of Perm, and is a variation of [[ps:Cyrl|Cyrillic]], with insertions of [[ps:Grek|Greek]] and local runes. Named for the first two letters, An and Bur. Sometimes it was used as a cipher for Russian. In 17th century was finally supplanted with Cyrillic.\n\nAnbur is an important source for Finno-Ugric languages. Only [[ps:Hung|Hungarian runes]] are more ancient.

[Script.Phag]
Name=Phags Pa (Mongolian square)
Lang=Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Uyghur
Text=[[ps:Mong|Mongolians]] used [[ps:Ougr|Uyghur]] alphabet with minor changes. When Mongols conquered China, Kublai Khan got a problem of communication between court and multinational people, and the task was solved by Phagpa (1235–1280), Kublai’s guru. The script was introduced with great efforts, Uyghur alphabet was banned at least twice. In 1368 Chinese overthrew Mongols, the script was quickly forgotten. Today it’s used sometimes in seals of monasteries of Tibet and Bhutan.\n\nIn fonts it’s usually drawn turned 90° to the left to write in lines. Letters are written one after other, like in usual alphabetic script. Letters in a syllable are joined together, there’s a narrow space between syllables. Vowel {{t|a}} is inherent and written only if it’s initial.\n: {{sm|ꡏꡡꡃ ꡣꡡꡙ}} = mongxol\n\nThee styles existed: book (main), seal (mimicked old Chinese calligraphy that was used in seals), and Tibetan (resembles [[ps:Marc|Marchen]]).\n\nNumbers are spelled out in all specimen. Most specimen have no punctuation; some used Mongolian marks or middle circular full-stop unified with U+3002.

[Script.Phli]
Name=Inscriptional Pahlavi
Lang=Middle Iranian languages
Text=Language of Iranian inscriptions in clay, the earliest variant of Pahlavi script. Was used until 5th century, heyday of Sasanid Empire.

[Script.Phlp]
Name=Psalter Pahlavi
Lang=Middle Persian
Text=Very cursive script identified as intermediate form of Pahlavi. There are only two specimen: 12-page fragment of 6th{{_}}century Psalter found in Xinjiang Region, and a cross from Afghanistan. Section marks were written half black, half red.\n\n''Book Pahlavi'', the final form of script, still failed to enter Unicode, a hole was left for it.

[Script.Phnx]
Name=Phoenician
Lang=Phoenician and other Semitic (Moabite, Philistine…), Punic
Text=Comes from poorly-explored Proto-Sinaitic script. Letter names are [[pt:acrophonic|acrophonic]]: Alef=ox, Bet=house, Gaml=camel…\n\nThough [[ps:Ugar|Ugaritic]] rather than Phoenician is the most ancient deciphered consonant script and the first well-known alphabetic order, importance of Phoenician script is hard to over-estimate: Phoenicians were good sailors and spread the script across all ancient world.\n\nScripts emerged from Phoenician:\n* Anatolian alphabets (for example, [[ps:Lyci|Lycian]]{{-}}died);\n* Old Lybian (ancestor of [[ps:Tfng|Tifinagh]]);\n* Paleohispanic, or Iberian (died);\n* [[ps:Armi|Aramaic]] (ancestor of [[ps:Syrc|Syriac]], [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] and, by widespread hypothesis, [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]]);\n* [[ps:Grek|Greek]] (ancestor of [[ps:Latn|Latin]] and [[ps:Cyrl|Cyrillic]]).\n\nSo a large part of literate world is obliged to Phoenicians.\n\nDisappeared about 150{{_}}BC with destruction of Carthage; Phoenicia itself had been using daughter scripts for a long time.\n\nJean-Jacques Barthélemy deciphered [[ps:Palm|Palmyrene]] in 1754, and Phoenician in 1758, also using a bilingual with Greek.

[Script.Plrd]
Name=Miao (Pollard script)
Lang=languages of Large Flowery and Szechuan Hmongs (=Miao), Lisu, Yi
Text=Invented in 1936 by Methodist missionary Samuel Pollard. Based on [[ps:Cans|Canadian syllabary]]. The first attempt to encode was in 1997. Because of complex tonal structure of Hmong languages, only in 2010 the encoding was ready.\n\nEncoding scheme is\n: {{sm|𖼀}} + {{sm|◌𖽝}} +{{sm|&nbsp;𖾑}} = {{sm|𖼀𖽝𖾑}}

[Script.Prti]
Name=Inscriptional Parthian
Lang=Parthian
Text=Used in inscriptions and coins before the dawn of Sasanid Empire (3rd century). Later was supplanted with Persian with [[ps:Phli|Pahlavi]] script but was used sporadically. Contains seven ligatures [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] and two letters with swash-tails:\n: gimel {{sm|&#68418;}} + waw {{sm|&#68421;}} = gw (right to left!) {{sm|&rlm;&#68418;&#68421;}}\n: nun {{sm|&#68429;}} + nun {{sm|&#68429;}} = nn&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;{{sm|&rlm;&#68429;&#68429;}}

[Script.Rjng]
Name=Rejang
Lang=Rejang
Text=Most of speakers are illiterate. Completely supplanted with [[ps:Latn|Latin]].\n\nBrahmic abugida with inherent vowel {{t|a}} and virama: {{sm|ꤰ}}=ka, {{sm|ꤰꥉ}}=ke, {{sm|ꤰ꥓}}=k. The script degraded for the same reason as [[ps:Runr|runes]]: it’s easier to carve in wood. But generally Rejang is more developed than similar [[ps:Bugi|Lontara]] or [[ps:Batk|Batak]]: there are signs for few final consonants existing in language.

[Script.Rohg]
Name=Hanifi Rohingya
Lang=Rohingya
Text=Rohingya or Ruáingga is a small mostly Muslim ethnic group spread across Bangladesh, Myanmar and bordering countries. [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] writing is known since 19th century .\n\nSince 1980 Islamic preacher Mohammad Hanif invented more suitable script for Rohingya. The script uses own set of decimal digits. Letters are joined, like in Arabic, try to decipher autonym: {{sm|&rlm;𐴌𐴟𐴇𐴥𐴝𐴚𐴒𐴙𐴝}}\n\nThe language has thee tones denoted with diacritics. Punctuation marks are ordinary Arabic: exclamation mark '''!''', semicolon ''':''' and sometimes period '''.''' are [[pt:ascii|ASCII]], the rest are reversed from Arabic block.

[Script.Runr]
Name=Runes
Lang=ancient Germanic and Scandinavian languages
Text=Runes have distinctive angled shape suitable for carving: wood resists differently along and across the grain, so it’s hard to make curves. Later variants of runes changed for cursive writing with quill. About 5000 specimen of runic writing are found, the oldest are from 2nd century.\n\nThe block is a union of several runic alphabets:\n* Elder Futhark, after first six letters{{-}}Scandinavian runes of 1st to 8th century, 24 letters\n* Younger Futhark{{-}}Scandinavian runes since 9th century, 16 letters\n* Futhorc{{-}}Anglo-Saxon runes of 5th to 11th century, borrowed from Elder Futhark and expanded to 34 letters in its youngest form\n* 19 calendar runes (Younger Futhark + 3 more)\n* Three runes for modern English attributed to J.{{_}}Tolkien\n* Five runes from Franks Casket, relic of 8th century\n\nRunes were supplanted with [[ps:Latn|Latin]] with advent of Christianity: in Western Europe by 11th century, in Scandinavia by 15th, and in some villages by 20th century, gradually replacing with Latin.\n\nNazi Germany liked esoterics, and runes together with it. Runes are popular in New Age and Neo-Paganism.\n\nScripts of arbitrary shape are called runes in mass culture, including unsuitable for carving. Alphabets of ancient [[ps:Orkh|Turks]], Bulgars and [[ps:Hung|Hungarians]] of similar angled shape are called runes too.

[Script.Samr]
Name=Samaritan
Lang=Hebrew, Samaritan Aramaic
Text=Comes from Paleo-Hebrew ([[ps:Phnx|Phoenician]]) script. According to Bible, Samaritans came to Palestine from Mesopotamia and adopted Jewish religion and culture. As of 2021, no more than 700 Samaritans exist.

[Script.Sarb]
Name=Old South Arabian
Lang=South Arabian lanuages ''(Sabaean, Qatabanic etc)'', Ge’ez
Text=Old South Arabian is an ancestor of [[ps:Ethi|Ethiopic]] script, comes from poorly-explored Proto-Sinaic script. It was supplanted with [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] in 7th century with expansion of Arabs.

[Script.Saur]
Name=Saurashtra
Lang=Saurashtra {{nspk}}, script is used in Tamil Nadu only
Text=The origin is unclear, all [[ps:Taml|Tamil]] Saurashtra are bilingual, and the rest of states write in [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]], [[ps:Gujr|Gujarati]], [[ps:Telu|Telugu]].\n\nBrahmic abugida with inherent vowel {{t|ə}} and virama: {{sm|ꢒ}}=kə, {{sm|ꢒꢶ}}=ki, {{sm|ꢒ꣄}}=k. [[pt:virama|Virama]] is used frequently. Initial vowel is a separate character: {{sm|ꢄ}}=i.

[Script.Sgnw]
Name=Sutton SignWriting
Lang=sign languages, particularly ASL=AMSLAN ''(language of American deaf)''
Text=The system was created in 1974 by dancer Valerie Sutton. It was based on DanceWriting created by her two years before. Later she made systems for writing pantomime, other sports (figure skating, karate…), physical excercises, body language of people and animals, but they weren’t so successful.\n\nIt is not{{_}}stated whose side the gestures are written from, performer or spectator. Most publications are performer-oriented. There are lots of character, they convey motions of fingers, arms, shoulders, sight, also touches and face expressions. For hands there are fist (square), loose fist (circle), open palm (pentagon), sharp of hand (rectangle) and others. The same gesture may be written differently.\n\nThough the system isn’t strictly [[pt:universality|textual]]{{-}}position on page ''matters''{{-}}it was added to Unicode in 2015. Only characters were added, without any formatting. But many programs exist that can fix X/Y coordinates on a sheet{{-}}for example, vector graphic editors.\n\nGestures with other hand, to other side, turned sideways are made with combining characters: any of Fill{{_}}2…6, and any of Rotation{{_}}2…16. For example, to write “gouge blinkers out”, {{sm|𝠎𝪟𝦆}}, one should write 1D80E+Fill6+1D986.

[Script.Shaw]
Name=Shavian
Lang=English, Esperanto
Text=Irish writer George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was obsessed with shorthand, and worked on BBC’s Advisory Committee on Spoken English where he met several proponents of phonetic writing. So he willed to make a phonetic alphabet for English, far from [[ps:Latn|Latin]] to prevent from looking like pidgin English. The contest was won by Ronald Kingsley Read.\n\nThe alphabet consists of three types of letters: short, tall and deep. Short letters are vowels, vocalic ({{t|r}}, {{t|ℓ}}) and nasal consonants, tall are voiceless consonants. When turned 180°, tall letter becomes deep and starts to mean a corresponding voiced consonant (except pair {{t|ŋ}}{{t|h}}).\n\nThe first work that came in new alphabet was Shaw’s play ''Androcles and Lion'', in bilingual with English (1962). In 2013 the first non-bilingual came, ''Alice in Wonderland''. Anyway, publications in the new alphabet are sporadic.

[Script.Shrd]
Name=Sharada
Lang=Sanskrit, Kashmiri
Text=Sharada comes from Gupta (northern branch of [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]]), was widespread in 8–12th centuries in North-West India and Afghanistan. Later Sharada became less and less suitable for Kashmiri and fell out of use. Ancestor of [[ps:Guru|Gurmukhi]] script.\n\nCurrently it is used by Kashmiri Pandits (Hindu minority in Islamic Kashmir) and Indian Buddhists writing in Sanskrit.\n\nBhahmic abugida with inherent vowel {{t|a}}. [[pt:virama|Virama]], unusual for Indic scripts, is situated on the right and used frequently. There are many [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] “consonant-virama-consonant”.\n{{smtable|ka|*𑆑|+ i|**◌𑆴|= ki|*𑆑𑆴}}\n{{smtable|ka|*𑆑|+ virama|*◌𑇀|= k|*𑆑𑇀}}\n{{smtable|ka|*𑆑|+ virama|*◌𑇀|+ ta|*𑆠|= kta|*𑆑𑇀𑆠}}\nThe headstroke may be solid, broken or have arbitrary breaks.

[Script.Sidd]
Name=Siddham (Bonji)
Lang=Sanskrit
Text=Medieval North-Indic script related to Buddhism that evolved from [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]]. It is often written with brush like Chinese do. There are no spaces between words.\n\nIt was spread across all Buddhist East, including Japan, but in 9th century China made several purges of “foreign religions”, cutting Japan from mainland sources. By 1200 Siddham was supplanted with other scripts, and nowadays is conserved in Japanese Buddhism only, named ''Sittan'' or ''Bonji''.\n\nThere are no digits in Japanese ''Bonji'', and some room was left for old Indic digits. Many punctuation marks and decorations specific for religious texts are encoded.\n\n[[pt:virama|Virama]] is extremely rare, and is found only in the end of words because of multiple [[pt:ligature|ligatures]]{{-}}letters are written top-down.\n{{smtable|ka|*𑖎|+ i|**◌𑖰|= ki|*𑖎𑖰}}\n{{smtable|ka|*𑖎|+ virama|*◌𑖿|= k|*𑖎𑖿}}\n{{smtable|ka|*𑖎|+ virama|*◌𑖿|+ ta|*𑖝|= kta|*𑖎𑖿𑖝}}

[Script.Sidt]
Name=Sidetic
Lang=Sidetic ''(Anatolia)''
Text=Language and script used near Side, modern Turkey. The last evidence is the 2nd century BC. Only 13 inscriptions are known. The language is considered deciphered, except some rare letters. Letter meanings are:\n\nA E I O U W Y P . ? M T D Th Z S N . L Ts G X R ? ? B . ? ? ? ? ?

[Script.Sind]
Name=Khudawadi (Sindhi)
Lang=Sindhi
Text=The script was named after city of Khudabad, Pakistan. In 1868 Khudawadi was declared the main script of Sindhi by British administration. By 20th century Sindhi, mainly Muslims, moved to [[ps:Arab|Arabic]], but the script is still alive.  [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]] and [[ps:Guru|Gurmukhi]] are also used, historically [[ps:Khoj|Khojki]] was in use.\n\nBrahmic abugida with inherent vowel {{t|a}} and a frequent [[pt:virama|virama]]:\n{{smtable|ka|*𑊺|+ i|**◌𑋡|= ki|*𑊺𑋡}}\n{{smtable|ka|*𑊺|+ virama|**◌𑋪|= k|*𑊺𑋪}}\n\nTry to read autonym: {{sm|𑋝𑋡𑋟𑋐𑋢}}

[Script.Sinh]
Name=Sinhala
Lang=Sinhala
Text=As most other scripts of South-East Asia, comes from [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]]. Writing came to Sri Lanka in 3rd century, and by 13th century the script had formed. Letters have curly shape: in ancient times writing on palm leaves was widespread, anf straight lines would cut the leaf along veins.\n\nInherent vowel is {{t|ʌ}}. There are less than 30 [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] “consonant-consonant”, they all are written explicitly, using character U+200D{{_}}ZWJ. [[pt:virama|Virama]] (“remove vowel” sign) is called “al-lakuna” in Arabic manner and is very frequent.\n: ka {{sm|&#xD9A;}} + i {{sm|&#x25CC;&#3538;}} = ki {{sm|&#xD9A;&#3538;}}\n: ka {{sm|&#xD9A;}} + virama {{sm|&#x25CC;&#xDCA;}} = k {{sm|&#xD9A;&#xDCA;}}\n: ka {{sm|&#xD9A;}} + virama {{sm|&#x25CC;&#xDCA;}} + ZWJ + va {{sm|&#xDC0;}} = kva {{sm|&#xD9A;&#xDCA;&zwj;&#xDC0;}}\n\nSri Lankans use European digits, but two sets are encoded: positional digits were used for numbering palm-leaf books, and they are used today in horoscopes. [[pk:111E0|Others]], non-positional, disappeared in early 19th century. Also at least two letter-based systems exist.

[Script.Sogd]
Name=Sogdian
Lang=Sogdian ''(Samarkand{{-}}today in Uzbekistan)''
Text=Sogdian script came from [[ps:Syrc|Syriac]] about 100{{_}}CE. [[ps:Ougr|Old Uyghur]] script derives from Sogdian, and [[ps:Mong|Mongolian]] from Uyghur. The script was used until 10th century, after that Sogdiana was finally turned to Islam and switched to [[ps:Arab|Arabic]]. The last specimen is ≈1200. Letters are joined.\n\nUnicode encodes two variants of Sogdian: old (≈300) and new (after Buddhist manuscripts since 6th century).\n\nIt’s clear how Mongolian script became vertical: sometimes Sogdians laid text 90° to the left, and such a variant was borrowed by Uyghurs.

[Script.Sogo]
Name=Old Sogdian
Lang=Sogdian ''(Samarkand{{-}}today in Uzbekistan)''

[Script.Sora]
Name=Sora Sompeng
Lang=Sora
Text=Sora or Savara is a small vulnerable Austro-Asian (not Indo-European) language of India. The script was invented in 1936 by Mangei Gomango, [[ps:Latn|Latin]] was used before that. The script is somewhat poor{{-}}no phonemes borrowed from neighbouring languages. Also Sora is written with [[ps:Orya|Odia]] and [[ps:Telu|Telugu]].\n\nMost sources consider Sora an alphabet, but it has inherent vowel {{t|a}}, as in [[pt:brahmic|Brahmic abugida]]. Try to read the autonym {{sm|𑃐𑃦𑃝𑃗 𑃐𑃦𑃖𑃛𑃣𑃗}}.

[Script.Soyo]
Name=Soyombo
Lang=Mongol, Lhasa Tibetan, Sanskrit
Text=The script was invented by Buddhist monk Zanabazar, artist and author of square script [[ps:Zanb|named for himself]]. The name comes from Sanskrit ''svayambhu'' “self-created”. The script from very begginning was used for religion only{{-}}on prayer wheels, seals, signs of temples. Character 11A9E also known as ''Soyombo'' is a symbol of Mongolia.\n\nBrahmic abugida with inherent vowel {{t|a}} and unusual design: the frame contains of vertical stem on the right and triangle above. This frame carries main consonant, vowel mark, final consonant, length mark and diphtong mark.\n{{smtable|ra|*𑩼|+ i|*◌𑩑|+ au|*◌𑩘|+ final ℓ|*◌𑪒|= riul|*𑩼𑩑𑩘𑪒}}\n\n[[pt:virama|Virama]] is purely virtual, for consonant conjuncts:\n{{smtable|ka|*𑩜|+ subjoiner|*◌𑪙|+ va|*𑩾|= kva|*𑩜𑪙𑩾}}\n\nOther conjuncts are encoded using initial consonants:\n{{smtable|initial la|*𑪇|+ ka|*𑩜|= lka|*𑪇𑩜}}\n\nNumbers aren’t attested in sources.

[Script.Sund]
Name=Sundanese
Lang=Sundanese ''(Java)''
Text=Language of Sunda {{nspk}}, widespread in Western Java. Script of [[ps:Kawi|Kawi]] origin, inherent vowel is {{t|a}}. Vowel marks are added for other vowels, and [[pt:virama|virama]] sign ''(pamaaeh)'' for “naked” consonants: {{sm|ᮞ}}=sa, {{sm|ᮞᮥ}}=su, {{sm|ᮞ᮪}}=s. Initial vowels are separate letters.\n\nThe script was used until 18th century, after that [[ps:Java|Javanese]] and Pegon (local variant of [[ps:Arab|Arabic]]) were used, in 20th century [[ps:Latn|Latin]] was introduced. In 1997 authorities of Indonesia decide to give Sunda their own script, making it from Old Sundanese.\n\nThe second virtual virama is only for typing historical [[pt:ligature|ligatures]]. They are absent in current font, but the author of ''Unicodia'' drew one in [[pt:private|private-use]] position:\n: ka {{sm|ᮊ}} + virama {{sm|◌᮫}} + ta {{sm|ᮒ}} = kta {{sm|&#xE000;}}

[Script.Sunu]
Name=Sunuwar
Lang=Sunuwar {{nspk||=Koinch}}
Text=Invented by Krishna Bahadur Jentich (1926–1991). Initially pure alphabet, because of interaction with Brahmic scripts it started to use inherent {{t|a}}, [[pt:virama|virama]], a mark for final {{t|r}}, and even [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] for consonant conjuncts. The official orthography does not recognize these changes.\n\nThe script did not mark tones until recently, and tone marks are basic 0300, 0301 and 030D.\n\nThe main script is [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]], which poorly conveys Sunuwar phonetics. Also, there’s Tikamuli, an unencoded Brahmic abugida promoted by influential funds since 2005.

[Script.Sylo]
Name=Syloti Nagri
Lang=Syloti
Text=By one of theories, the script came from [[ps:Kthi|Kaithi]] and was invented by Muslims. It was favoured by poets of 19th century for simplicity, but it had been supplanted with [[ps:Beng|Bengali]] until mid 20th century. In 2000s learning of Syloti Nagri resumed in Bangladesh.\n\nBrahmic abugida with inherent vowel {{t|ɔ}} and [[pt:virama|virama]] ''(hasanta)'': {{sm|ꠇ}}=kɔ, {{sm|ꠇꠣ}}=ka, {{sm|ꠇ꠆}}=k. Other variant of virama exists, {{sm|ꠇ꠬}}=k, like in other Brahmic scripts. Initial vowels are separate letters. Text hangs from a headstroke, but unlike [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]], “holds” it tightly.\n\nVirama in Syloti is infrequent for two reasons. First, double consonants and some conjuncts form ligatures: {{sm|ꠇ꠆ꠇ}}=kkɔ, {{sm|ꠇ꠆ꠔ}}=ktɔ. Such ligatures are typed in standard way: first letter, virama, second letter. Second, sometimes final {{t|ɔ}} becomes silent.\n\nWritten left to right, but Syloti books are bound right to left as a tribute to Islam. Digits are [[pt:unification|unified]] with Bengali.

[Script.Syrc]
Name=Syriac
Lang=Syriac ''(used as liturgical)'', Neo-Aramaic languages, Malayalam, Sogdian, Arabic
Text=Child script of [[ps:Armi|Aramaic]] alphabet, later developed to [[ps:Arab|Arabic]]. The script is used by minor Semitic ethnic groups. Some features of Arabic are already seen in Syriac: linked letters written with a single line (except vowel marks), different forms of isolated, initial, medial and final letter.\n\nThe script of early Christian manuscripts (50–400) is known as Estrangelo (Greek στρογγύλη{{-}}round). West Syria (Syria, Palestine) belonged to Greeks, and East (Persia, Mesopotamia) to Persians. This divided church, language and script into two forms: East Syriac (Nestorian, Chaldean) and Weat Syriac (Jacobite, Maronite). They use different styles of writing and vowel marks. The script was used approximately up to 14th century.\n\nYou will probably find Estrangelo in your system{{-}}it is considered the main style of Syriac by Western historians. And ''Unicodia'' carries Western variant for diversity{{-}}it was created by diplomat and printer Savary de Brèves (1560–1627), and turned to computer font by ''Beth Mardutho'' institute for publishing Antioch Bible.

[Script.Tagb]
Name=Tagbanwa
Lang=languages of Palawan island ''(Philippines)''
Text=Comes from [[ps:Tglg|Tagalog]]. There are less than {{n|25000}} people speaking Tagbanwa, new generation prefer Tagalog. But the script is used by other Palawan languages ({{n|97000}} as of 2010), together with [[ps:Latn|Latin]].\n\nInherent vowel is {{t|a}}. [[pt:virama|Virama]] and signs for final consonants are absent, so these phonemes are guessed from context, like in [[ps:Buhd|Buhid]].

[Script.Takr]
Name=Takri
Lang=small languages of North India and Pakistan
Text=Comes from [[ps:Shrd|Sharada]]. Takri was used in business documentation, but post-war liberation of India quickly replaced it with [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]].\n\nEvery state has own style of Takri. Sometimes [[ps:Dogr|Dogra]] is considered one of these styles, but [[pt:unification|disunified]] with Takri for both political and technical reasons. [[pt:virama|Virama]] is absent in all local languages, it’s noticeable by autonym {{sm|𑚔𑚭𑚊𑚤𑚯}} {{t|ṭa:‑kᵊ‑ri:}}. But virama is used for ancient languages{{-}}Pali and Sanskrit. Only three letters can come into consonant [[pt:ligature|ligature]] as a second sign, “ya”, “ra” and “ha”: {{sm|𑚞𑚶𑚤}} {{t|prᵊ}}.

[Script.Tale]
Name=Tai Le
Lang=Tai Nüa and other languages of Tai (=Dai, =Lua; ''China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand'')
Text=Script of [[ps:Mymr|Burmese]] origin. Tones weren’t written initially. After several reforms of 20th century (last in 1988) the script almost turned to alphabet, and it remains an abugida because of empty consonant {{sm|ᥟ}} if the word starts with vowel, and tone letters after final consonant of syllable (if it’s present).\n\nSpaces are written between sentences rather that words.\n\nIn Tai Le of 3rd reform (1963–1988) usual European umlauts were used for tones: <big>à, á, ȧ, ä, ǎ</big>.\n\nThere are about {{n|500000}} Tai Nüa in China, but the language is being quickly supplanted with Chinese and thus is classified vulnarable. Less than {{n|500000}} more are scattered across other countries.

[Script.Talu]
Name=New Tai Lue
Lang=Lü and other languages of Tai (=Dai, =Lua; ''China; Tai communities in other countries use [[ps:Lana|Lanna]]'')
Text=The script is not related to [[ps:Tale|Tai Le]], though languages are close relatives. Created in 1950s by Chinese authorities to replace [[ps:Lana|Lanna]].\n\nInherent vowel is {{t|a}}. Virama looks like a looped hook and is written together with consonant in Unicode: {{sm|ᧇ}}. Writing of tones is unusual: consonants are in two cases, and the syllable may be followed with two signs {{sm|ᧈᧉ}}, total 2×3=6 tones.

[Script.Taml]
Name=Tamil
Lang=Tamil {{nspk}}, [[ps:Saur|Saurashtra]] {{nspk|Saur}}
Text=The script came from [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]] via Pallava (old [[ps:Gran|Grantha]]). Inherent vowel is {{t|a}}. [[pt:virama|Virama]] is very frequent and turned to a dot. Methods of affixing vowel marks to consonants are bizarre: ka={{sm|க}}, ki={{sm|கி}}, ṭa={{sm|ட}}, ṭi={{sm|டி}}. Most consonant conjunct [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] consist of full initial letter and smaller subjoined.\n\nLocal digits are mostly used in Grantha texts, Tamils prefer ordinary 0…9. Unlike other Indic counting systems, there are special characters for 10, 100 and 1000. Before government of India adopted rupee sing ₹, Tamils had {{sm|௹}}.\n\nDravidic South never submitted to Muslims and even created Shivaism, especially orthodox branch of Hinduism. English has several loanwords from Tamil: ''catamaran'', ''cash'', ''ginger'', ''coolie'' and others.

[Script.Tang]
Name=Tangut
Lang=Tangut ''(North-West China)''
Text=Very complex ideographic system that existed in Tangut kingdom of Xi Xia (North-West China). The simplest ideographs consist of 4 lines, ideograph “one” has 6. The most widespread version: the script was designed by Emperor Jingzong (=Li Yuanhao) and scientist Yeli Renrong.\n\nLike in China, Tangut calligraphy was well-developed, one ideograph had up to 4 forms. In Unicode thay are encoded with one character unless occur in the same source. Glyphs that have similar shape but different names are also unified.\n\nTangut kingdom was destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1227, but the script was used for several centuries more: the last specimen is 1502, also a handwritten mark later than 1680 exists.\n\nEuropeans started to study dead script since 1870, the key role was played by Soviet scientist Nikolai Nevsky.\n\nBecause of copyright issues, icons are original (traced by Prof. Jǐng Yǒngshí), and the font is modern Roman redrawn by Google company.

[Script.Tavt]
Name=Tai Viet
Lang=Lanuages of Black Tai ''(Vietnam)''
Text=Comes from [[ps:Thai|Old Thai]] (Sukhothai Kingdom). First standardized in 1961, later at UNESCO-sponsored workshop in 2006.\n\nThere is no inherent vowel, but the script remains an abugida because of bizarre vowel marks on the left, top and right: {{sm|ꪶꪀ}}=ko, {{sm|ꪀꪱ}}=ka, {{sm|ꪀꪲ}}=ki. Traditionally the reader should guess the tone, back in the first standardization tone marks were added.

[Script.Tayo]
Name=Tai Yo (Lai Tai)
Lang=Tai Yo
Text=Abugida of [[ps:Khmr|Khmer]] origin, with two unique twists:\n* It’s written right-to-left in columns, clearly influenced by [[ps:Hani|Chinese]]. If it’s impossible, the entire text is rotated, like in [[ps:Mong|Mongolian]].\n* All vowel marks are written below or on the right. There’re no preceding or enclosing vowel marks.\n\nInherent vowel is {{t|ɔ}}.  No tone marks. No punctuation marks, sometimes Chinese U+3001 and 02 are used. Sometimes syllables are separated with a small space. Numbers are spelled out in all sources. Modern texts use [[pk:FF00|fullwidth]] Western punctuation and digits, and two unencoded tone marks on the left. \n\nThe language still exists, and is written in [[ps:Latn|Latin]] or [[ps:Thai|Thai]].

[Script.Telu]
Name=Telugu
Lang=Telugu
Note=separated from [[ps:Knda|Kannada]]
Text=Like most of other scripts of South-East Asia, came from [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]]. About 1300 separated from [[ps:Knda|Kannada]] which is a sister script. In late 20th century a large-scale orthographic reform was carried out, it made written Telugu closer to spoken language.\n\nCheck mark at the top of letter means vowel {{t|a}}. If a vowel mark is added, the check mark disappears. [[pt:virama|Virama]] in explicit form is rare, both because Telugu prefers open syllables, and because of well-developed system of [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] for consonant conjuncts. Ligatures are made simply: a smaller letter is added below or on the right.\n: ka {{sm|క}} + i {{sm|◌ి}} = ki {{sm|కి}}\n: ka {{sm|క}} + virama {{sm|◌్}} + ta {{sm|త}} = kta {{sm|క్త}}

[Script.Tfng]
Name=Tifinagh (Berber)
Lang=Touareg and other Berber languages ''(Morocco)''
Note=before 2nd century{{_}}BC (old consonant), ≈1970 (modern)
Text=Origin of Old Lybian script is unclear, it’s usually thought that from [[ps:Phnx|Phoenician]]. The oldest specimen are two bilinguals of 2nd century{{_}}BC, from monument to Prince Ateban and from temple of King Masinissa. The script was [[pt:abjad|consonant]], it was usually written bottom-up or right to left.\n\nIn 20th century a new script was created from Old Lybian, written left to right. Muslim states (particularly Gaddafi’s Lybia and Morocco of 80s) banned the script, but in 2003 the king of Morocco permitted Tifinagh. Transitional Council of Libya also permitted Berber languages and Tifinagh.

[Script.Tglg]
Name=Tagalog (Baybayin)
Lang=Old Tagalog and other languages of Java and Philippines
Text=Brahmic abugida with inherent vowel {{t|a}} and [[pt:virama|virama]]. I’ll just write script’s autonym: {{sm|ᜊᜌ᜔ᜊᜌᜒᜈ᜔}} “ba-y-ba-yi-n”.\n\nSpanish missionaries (16th century) discovered that the islanders are almost {{%|100}} literate, and started to teach Baybayin themselves. Initially they did{{_}}not{{_}}understand direction of writing: the text was carved on bamboo planks, the knife was directed out from body, so they could write in one direction and read in another.\n\nThere are several causes of fall of Baybayin: Spanish imported paper, pen and printing, Tagalog started to distinguish {{t|r/d}}, {{t|u/o}}, {{t|i/e}} under their influence. The last but not{{_}}the least: [[ps:Latn|Latin]] helped in life, allowing a prestigious office job. By 19th century Baybayin had been almost dead, and the only thing remaining is to order Latin alphabet. There are modern attempts to revive Baybayin.\n\nIn 2021 a new phoneme {{t|r}} was encoded{{-}}both versions are from 19th century, and the one that survived until today unofficially (before Unicode 14) was put into position 170D. Also a second virama appeared: the cross is invented by Spanish and reminds of colonial past, and is just badly legible in small pitch.

[Script.Thaa]
Name=Thaana
Lang=Dhivehi {{nspk||=Maldivian}}
Text=Writing culture came to Maldives together with Buddhism, ''Evela Akuru'' script appeared based on [[ps:Sinh|Sinhala]]. The oldest inscription is dated 7–8th century. In 1153 local king adopted Islam and changed name to Muhammad al Adil; by 14th century it evolved to ''[[ps:Diak|Dives Akuru]]'' but remained left-to-right. In 1703 Sultan Ibrahim{{_}}III replaced the old script with new ''Gabuli Thaana'' (''standard script'').\n\nThe origin of Thaana is unique: consonants came from Arabic and pre-Islamic digits, and vowels from [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] vowel marks. The time smoothed lines, and writing with elegant 45-degree slant became widespread. Traveler Thor Heyerdahl compared Thaana with noodles.\n\nIn 1970s Thaana was on the edge of extinction: President Ibrahim Nasir established Telex communication, and government switched to a low-quality [[ps:Latn|Latin]] transliteration. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the next president, restored Thaana, and both scripts are used in parallel.

[Script.Thai]
Name=Thai
Lang=Thai
Text=Comes from [[ps:Khmr|Old Khmer]], that in turn comes from [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]]. The alphabet was arranged and approved by King Ramkhamhaeng the Great in 1283.\n\nInherent vowel is {{t|a}} in open syllables and {{t|o}} in closed ones: {{sm|ถนน}}={{t|thanon}} (road). Letters are [[pt:acrophonic|acrophonic]]: for example, letter {{sm|ช}} is named “cho chang” (elephant). There are no spaces between words.

[Script.Tibt]
Name=Tibetan
Lang=Tibetan, Dzongkha ''(Bhutan)'', Sherpan…
Text=Like most script of South-East Asia, came from Brahmi, inherent vowel is {{t|a}}.\n\nIt’s commonly accepted that the script was invented by Thonmi Sambhota who traveled to India and laid the foundation of Tibetan Buddhism. From that time orthography did{{_}}not{{_}}change much, and language changed, so writing greatly differs from pronunciation.

[Script.Tirh]
Name=Tirhuta (Maithili, Mithilakshar)
Lang=Maithili ''(India)'', Sanskrit
Note=separated from ''Gaudi''{{-}}proto-Bengali
Text=The script is close to [[ps:Beng|Bengali]], most characters are similar, but [[pt:unification|unification]] is impossible because of other [[pt:ligature|ligatures]]. The first metal type was made in 1920s, and the first digital font in 1990s. Most speakers (34{{_}}million as of 2000) switched to [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]] in 20th century, and the script is used mainly in Hinduism. For a long time Maithili was considered a dialect of Hindi or Bengali, but in 2003 it was proclaimed a separate language, Devanagari was left as main script.\n\nThe inherent vowel is {{t|a}}. [[pt:virama|Virama]] is used for Sanskrit only: consonant conjuncts are written as ligatures, and the vowel becomes silent at the end of words.\n{{smtable|ka|*𑒏|+ i|**◌𑒱|= ki|*𑒏𑒱}}\n{{smtable|ka|*𑒏|+ virama|**◌𑓂|+ ta|*𑒞|= kta|*𑒏𑓂𑒞}}

[Script.Tnsa]
Name=Tangsa
Lang=Tangsa languages {{nspk||=Tase-Naga}}
Text=A small family of Sino-Tibetan languages written in different types of [[ps:Latn|Latin]]. In 1990 Lakhum Mossang from India created the alphabet and teached about 100 people until his death in 2020.\n\nVowel names are phoneme + one of four tones. In comparison, in Hmong Latin tones are also written with letters.

[Script.Todr]
Name=Todhri (Elbasan) alphabet for Albanian
Lang=Albanian
Text=Invented by Theodhor Haxhifilipi also known as Teacher Todhri. He translated multiple Christian texts to Albanian, purportedly even the entire Bible. Only few texts survived, particularly Gospel of John and some prayers. The script was used around Elbasan long after his death in 1805: it was discovered about 1849 by Johann von Hahn (he suspected that it’s ancient despite name Todhri), and was quite rare. In 1900 an old monk literate in Todhri was found, the last literate people purportedly died about 1930.\n\nEncoding order is different from Hahn’s, and is sutable for modern Albanian studies.\n\nDo not confuse with [[ps:Elba|alphabet of Elbasan Gospel]]!

[Script.Tols]
Name=Tolong Siki
Lang=Kurukh {{nspk||=Kurux, Oraon}}
Text=Created by Narayan Oraon. It’s a pure alphabet without inherent vowel. The new alphabet better conveys the language than [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]], the main script for Kurukh.

[Script.Toto]
Name=Toto
Lang=Toto
Text=Small Sino-Tibetan language used in village of Totopara by Toto tribe. Status is critically endangered: language transfer is already broken. About ⅓ are literate. Writing system is [[ps:Beng|Bengali]] or own script invented in 2015 by Dhaniram Toto, the tribe’s elder.

[Script.Tutg]
Name=Tulu-Tigalari
Lang=Tulu {{nspk}}, Kannada, Sanskrit
Text=Very close ancient scripts ''Tulu'' and ''Tigalari'', some even consider them a single script. Maybe characters of sister-script ''Grantha-Malayalam'' will be added soon. They all are related to [[ps:Gran|Grantha]], and are rarely used nowadays in Hinduism. The first known inscription is 1159, but the script is much older. As a language of minority, Tulu was neglected by British authorities, and the script almost died.\n\nModern Tulu is written in [[ps:Knda|Kannada]] and [[ps:Mlym|Malayalam]], or in revived script commonly [[pt:unification|unified]] with Malayalam. There’s a consensus to not unify ancient and modern Tulu: live Brahmic scripts tend to simplify typing, and dead ones simplify font design and convey author’s spelling even on flawed fonts.\n\nAncient digits are very rarely attested and not encoded, modern ones are unified with Kannada. Tulu manuscripts contain editorial marks looking like subscript + (will probably be encoded later as a pan-Indic punctuation), so picture for virtual [[pt:virama|virama]] has plus inside rather than below. ''Danda'' bar is ordinary, and was encoded to prevent problems in multilingual text.

[Script.Ugar]
Name=Ugaritic
Lang=Ugaritic, Hurrian ''(only near Ugarit)''
Text=Semites that inhabited Levant (modern Syria) could{{_}}not{{_}}boast of economic, cultural or military power, but instead were on an intersection of trade routes. So they borrowed principles of [[ps:Xsux|cuneiform]] for their needs creating an alphabet of 30 consonants written left to right; no one knows how it was made and what had been before. Names of many letters are reconstructions and unknown for sure. The only punctuation mark is word divider.\n\nMany books and business documents survived, they gave understanding of different sides of Ugaritic life. There’s a suspicion that the alphabet is made by a single author because of economic design{{-}}frequent letters have less wedges.\n\nIt is believed that Ugaritic had no daughter scripts, though letter order is close to [[ps:Phnx|Phoenician]], and two unusual variants exist: shortened alphabet of 21 letter written right to left, and a tablet with [[ps:Sarb|South Arabic]] letter order.\n\nCity of Ugarit was abandoned about 1200{{_}}BC with Bronze Age Collapse, total decline of arguable nature that happened in ancient world of that time.

[Script.Vaii]
Name=Vai
Lang=Vai ''(Liberia, 100…200k according to different sources)''
Text=Script appeared about 1833. It was invented by Momolu Duwalu Bukele, probably under influence of [[ps:Cher|Cherokee]] (along with Africans several Native Americans migrated to Liberia, one even became a Vai chief).\n\nOne of causes of Vai survival is good character set borrowed from African culture. The other is because it was used in trade with Dutch and Portuguese. In 1962 University of Liberia added characters for missing syllables.

[Script.Vith]
Name=Vithkuqi alphabet for Albanian
Lang=Albanian
Text=The alphabet was created by Naum Veqilharxhi, writer, translator and lawyer. He worked on alphabet for 20 years, 1824–1844. Naum died two years later, and alphabet did{{_}}not{{_}}get significant spread. Named after Vithkuq, village where Naum was born. Also Germanized “Büthakukye” is widespread.\n\nAplhabet suits well to phonetics of Albanian, but for some reason has no{{_}}letters for digraphs “gj”, “rr”, “xh” and “zh” of modern Albanian.\n\nThere are several reasons for multiple Albanian alphabets ([[ps:Elba|Elbasan]], Vithkuqi, [[ps:Todr|Todhri]], Veso Bey, Vellara): scholars of national liberation movement looked at Slavs, Greeks and Turks and wanted their own alphabet, and just secret from Turks (Albania got independence in 1912 with collapse of Ottoman Empire). Naum’s reason is surely the former: his letters survived where he responded to criticism, and alphabet was made far from [[ps:Latn|Latin]], [[ps:Grek|Greek]] and [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] because of religious neutrality.

[Script.Wcho]
Name=Wancho
Lang=Wancho
Text=Wancho, a small Sino-Tibetan language, is ordinarily written with [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]] or [[ps:Latn|Latin]]. Between 2001 and 2012 a teacher named Banwang Losu devised a new alphabet. Four tones are written with diacritics. Punctuation is normal European.

[Script.Wara]
Name=Warang Citi
Lang=Ho
Text=The script was made from scratch by community leader Lako Bodra. He claimed that it came to him in divine revelation from someone Dhawan Turi from 13th century. The alphabet starts with Om character{{-}}the first sound of creation of the universe. Ho is an{{_}}unwritten language, about {{%|2}} write with Warang Citi and the same number write with [[ps:Orya|Odia]].\n\nThe type is arguable: every letter has an inherent vowel {{t|a}} (some have {{t|ɔ}} or {{t|ɛ}}), like in [[pt:brahmic|Brahmic abugidas]]. It also has alphabetic features: two cases, all vowels are full rather than marks. Pronunciation is{{_}}not{{_}}always consistent: it’s unknown whether inherent vowel becomes silent (in final position it’s always silent). Read autonym {{sm|𑢹𑣗𑣁𑣜𑣊 𑣏𑣂𑣕𑣂}}: letters are pronounced by the last phoneme of name except {{sm|𑢹}}=h и {{sm|𑣗}}=b, this digraph is read {{t|w}}.

[Script.Xpeo]
Name=Old Persian cuneiform
Lang=Old Persian
Text=The principle of writing was taken from [[ps:Xsux|Sumero-Akkadian]] cuneiform, but letters are almost completely different. The most widespread version: the script was invented artificially to fix achievements of kings of Achaemenid dynasty. All known inscriptions cover just two centuries 520–330{{_}}BC.\n\nBy 1800 the word “king” had been identified. In 1802 Georg Grotefend deciphered kings’ names{{-}}he did{{_}}not{{_}}have a{{_}}bilingual, just knew Greek pronunciations like “Darius” or “Xerxes”, originally “Dārayavaʰuš” and “Xšaya-ṛšā”. In 1823 François Champollion found an [[ps:Egyp|Egyptian]]-cuneiform bilingual, and confirmed that Grotefend was right. In 1936 Eugène Burnouf guessed that one of inscriptions is a list of Daruis’ satrapies, and deciphered almost all alphabet. Decipherment of Persian cuneiform became a{{_}}key to Sumerian.

[Script.Xsux]
Name=Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform
Lang=Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Elamite, Hurrian, Urartian…
Text=Initially (≈3500{{_}}BC) business documents were written on clay (10 cows). Ideographs had appeared by 3200, and use of ideographs as syllables started by 3000{{_}}BC. Style changed in parallel: characters turned 90° counterclockwise, embossing with prismatic stylus started{{-}}hence elements of script, sharp wedges.\n\nCuneiform was supplanted with more progressive scripts during 1st millennium{{_}}BC. For example, [[ps:Xpeo|Persian cuneiform]] (1st millennium{{_}}BC) was alphasyllabic rather that ideosyllabic. The last known specimen is 75{{_}}CE.\n\nTablets were preserved for several millennia in deserts of Persia and Iraq, and Persian cuneiform had been deciphered by mid 19th century. It became a key to Sumerian. All known languages had been deciphered by 1900.\n\n“Cuneiform” block approximately corresponds to cuneiform of Third Dynasty of Ur (≈2100{{_}}BC), and later forms (Old and New Assyrian) are [[pt:unification|unified]] as variants. “Early dynastic cuneiform” block describes earlier characters ≈2900{{_}}BC.

[Script.Yezi]
Name=Yezidi
Lang=Northern Kurdish (=Kurmanji)
Text=Yezidis are a part of Kurdish people that profess religion of Yezidism derived from [[ps:Avst|Zoroastrianism]]. Yezidi holy books, ''Book of Revelation'' and ''Black Book'', are written with special script (earlier versions in [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] are also known). There is no consensus on dating of these books.\n\nYezidis were constantly oppressed by Muslims, so their religion is mostly oral, few witnessed books in written form. Islamic State made a genocide of Yezidis in 2014–2017: about 5000 are killed, at least 5000 went missing, and about 500k fled from Iraq. Yezidi girl Nadia Murad was captured, managed to escape, became UN Goodwill Ambassador, and was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.

[Script.Yiii]
Name=Yi (Nuosu)
Lang=Nuosu {{nspk}} and other Yi languages
Note=syllabic
Text=The first sample of old (ideographic) Yi script is dated ≈1500, but the script is definitely older. Legends say that it existed in Tang dynasty (618–907). Script consists of {{n|8000}} to {{n|10000}} ideographs.\n\nModern syllabic Yi was invented by Chinese government in 1974. The language has 43 consonants, 8 vowels and 4 tones (simple, p, t and x), but not{{_}}all combinations are possible, and Yi script can write {{n|1165}} syllables.

[Script.Zanb]
Name=Zanabazar square (Mongolian horizontal square)
Lang=Mongolian, Lhasa Tibetan, Sanskrit
Text=Buddhist monk Zanabazar (1635–1723), linguist and artist, is known for development of [[ps:Soyo|Soyombo]] script. Less known that he designed Mongolian horizontal square script, also based on [[ps:Tibt|Tibetan]]{{-}}it’s unknown before or after Soyombo (main hypothesis: before), why and how wide it was used. Rediscovered in 1801, a few specimen survived.\n\nBrahmic abugida with inherent vowel {{t|a}} and [[pt:virama|virama]]. Moreover, it has two physical viramas, both are seen in sources and have no control meaning, one for the last letter in a word, the other for consonant conjuncts. There are two more ways to implement consonant conjuncts: using the third virtual virama (letters stack together, sometimes squishing in height), and using small signs of final consonants. These methods mix bizarrely: for example, one consonant with virama, and three stacked together. Initial vowels form by fixing vowel marks to {{sm|𑨀}}. None of sources has digits. Vertical writing is bizarre and outside the scope of Unicode: a mark that is initially above the second letter may appear above the entire word.

[Script.Zinh]
Name=Various
Text=Combining mark is used in several scripts.

[Snip]
ArabPres1=The block is created for [[pt:convertibility|compatibility]] with old encodings like CP864 (DOS), where different codes were used for isolated, initial, medial and final letters due to [[pt:dynamic|limited]] typography engines.
ArabPres2=It’s better to avoid these characters in normal text. The only legitimate use is educational materials, so the characters have “Arabic letter” class (in many old encodings text was written left to right).
GrekCoptUni=In Unicode{{_}}1.0 Coptic was [[pt:unification|unified]] with Greek, and all purely Coptic letters were considered Greek too. Since Unicode{{_}}4.1 (2005) these languages were disunified: Coptic studies often contained Greek text. Moreover, only one Coptic letter has significantly different glyphs in capital and small case: {{smfunky|Ϧϧ}}.

[CharCat.Cc]
Name=Control
Text=In first years, when it was often needed to repeat exchange session by hand (using punched tape or console), control characters were used instead of data formats and network protocols. {{k|Ctrl}} key was initially used to enter control characters. Currently few of them are used:\n\n* null character 00{{-}}end of string in memory;\n* end of file 04 (Unix) and 1A (DOS/Windows){{-}}entered from console as {{k|Ctrl|D}}/{{k|Ctrl|Z}} to finish text input;\n* bell 07{{-}}terminal or printer draws operator’s attention. Currently usually via sound card and without pausing printing;\n* backspace 08{{-}}moves carriage one step back;\n* tabulation 09{{-}}moves to positions 9, 17, 25, 33… for table formatting;\n* line feed 0A{{-}}end of line in text file (Unix), turns drum one line forward;\n* form feed 0C{{-}}printer ejects the sheet;\n* carriage return 0D. Hence end of line in DOS/Windows 0D+0A{{-}}printer returns carriage and turns drum;\n* escape 1B{{-}}execute some command, either printer’s (fonts, graphics) or console’s (cursor movement, colours).\n\nOther interesting commands:\n\n* vertical tabulation 0B{{-}}turn the drum to preprogrammed position. Makes printing on existing forms faster and quieter;\n* shift out/in 0E/0F{{-}}other ribbon colour, other character set;\n* data link escape 10{{-}}the next character is [[pt:graphic|graphic]], not{{_}}control;\n* delete 7F{{-}}correcting mistakes on punched tapes (all seven tracks are punched, this character is skipped). In some terminals FF character plays this role, that’s why [[ps:Cyrl|Russian]] “я” was replaced with capital in file servers, in MUD games.\n\nAll 65 characters from Control category are historical. Characters that actually affect text display are called [[pt:format|format]].

[CharCat.Cf]
Name=Format
Text=Invisible character that controls various text-processing algorithms:\n\n* Wraps text into lines: 00AD{{-}}soft hyphen.\n\n* Adds semantics to text: 2062{{-}}invisible multiplication sign in equation, and it’s possible to break the line a{{_}}//{{_}}×b (a×{{_}}//{{_}}×b in Russia), unlike invisible function application 2061.\n\n* Builds/breaks [[pt:ligature|ligatures]]: 200D{{-}}zero-width joiner.\n\n* Specifies writing direction: 2066{{-}}isolate a span of text that goes left-to-right.\n\n* Does script-specific tasks that are impossible to implement using font: 1D173{{-}}start a group of musical notes connected with beam.

[CharCat.Ll]
Name=Letter/lowercase
Text=[[pt:minuscule|Minuscule]] writing appeared in early Middle Ages for economy of expensive parchment, turned to small letters, and made Latin a very expressive alphabet.

[CharCat.Lm]
Name=Letter/modifier
Text=Such “unter-letters” are commonly used in phonetics, and add additional meaning to letters. For example, modifier letter is prime xʹ sometimes used for palatal consonants, unlike mathematical prime x′.

[CharCat.Lo]
Name=Letter/other
Text=Characters of unicameral scripts{{-}}without capital and small letters. For example, [[ps:Hebr|Hebrew]], [[ps:Arab|Arabic]], and [[ps:Hani|CJK ideographs]]. Also special characters like masculine/feminine ordinal indicator in Romance languages (1º{{-}}first masculine, 1ª{{-}}first feminine).

[CharCat.Lt]
Name=Letter/mixed case
Text=Digraph characters consisting of capital and small letter. For example, Croatian Latin has digraph ǈ. Serbian counterpart Љ is not{{_}}a{{_}}digraph and thus has no mixed case.

[CharCat.Lu]
Name=Letter/uppercase
Text=Scripts that adopted small (lowercase, minuscule) letters, started to call old-shaped letters capital, uppercase or majuscule.

[CharCat.Mc]
Name=Mark/spacing
Text=Spacing (having their own width) combining marks are present in some scripts of South-East Asia: Devanagari, Bengali, Kannada, Hangul…

[CharCat.Me]
Name=Mark/enclosing
Text=Enclosing marks are used in old Cyrillic letter numbers (А҈). Also encosing square, circle and other shapes exist. None of tested typography engines in Windows{{_}}10 20H2 (GDI, Cairo, Skia) supports these characters perfectly, but on good fonts like DejaVu the result is not{{_}}so{{_}}bad.

[CharCat.Mn]
Name=Mark/nonspacing
Text=Non-spacing marks (for example, accent á) are designed as zero-width characters, hence the name. In good fonts designer manually puts marks on the most common letters. But if such combination is not{{_}}foreseen (8́), marks are laid randomly, and the result is far from nice.

[CharCat.Nd]
Name=Number/decimal
Text=People count in tens, because they have ten fingers. Words “digit” and “finger” are related in many languages. Positional numeral system invented in India is used by all the world, but in languages of Middle East and South-East Asia digits are weird.

[CharCat.Nl]
Name=Number/letter
Text=Roman, Chinese and other numerals based on letters. Ancient Slavic numerals are also based on letters, but Unicode uses for them ordinary А, В, Г… with combining marks.

[CharCat.No]
Name=Number/other
Text=Archaic numeral systems, [[pt:precomposed|precomposed]] fractions, superscripts, subscripts, circled numbers, abbreviations for big numbers and more.

[CharCat.Pc]
Name=Punctuation/connector
Text=A small group of characters. The most well-known of them is underscore.

[CharCat.Pd]
Name=Punctuation/dash
Text=Hyphens and dashes. Minus is also a dash, but it is classified as mathematical sign.

[CharCat.Pe]
Name=Punctuation/closing bracket
Text=Brackets are allocated to a separate category because they play an important role in bidirectional writing.

[CharCat.Pf]
Name=Punctuation/final
Text=Mainly quotes.

[CharCat.Pi]
Name=Punctuation/initial
Text=Mainly quotes.

[CharCat.Po]
Name=Punctuation/other
Text=Period, comma, percent, list bullet and many other characters.

[CharCat.Ps]
Name=Punctuation/opening bracket
Text=Brackets are allocated to a separate category because they play an important role in bidirectional writing.

[CharCat.Sc]
Name=Symbol/currency
Text=Currency character is an important part of country’s image, and even Mongolian tugrik has a sign <font size='+1'>₮</font> looking like tombstone. Artemy Lebedev in the end of 1990s said that Russian ruble does{{_}}not{{_}}need a{{_}}special character, but afterwards his PR advanced sign <font size='+1'>₽</font> to official status.

[CharCat.Sk]
Name=Symbol/modifier
Text=Character like circumfex ^ that look like [[pt:combining|combining]] marks, but have no their special properties. And some other characters.\n\nMany of these characters originate from typewriters: to type Á, you move the carriage one step back and type accent in the same [[pt:mono|character cell]]. The glyph was drawn in such a fashion that the same character is suitable for both apostrophe and accent.

[CharCat.Sm]
Name=Symbol/mathematical
Text=Initially several systems were used for computer mathematics, the most well-known of them are TᴇX (pronounced “tech”) and MathType (aka ''Microsoft Equation''). Unicode gives hope that computer mathematics will receive some standard{{-}}and limited ability to write equations in general-purpose systems like Internet forums.

[CharCat.So]
Name=Symbol/other
Text=Unicode contains plenty of different characters, including commercial, technical and [[pt:emoji|emoji]].

[CharCat.Zl]
Name=Separator/line
Text=One character 2028.

[CharCat.Zp]
Name=Separator/paragraph
Text=One character 2029.

[CharCat.Zs]
Name=Separator/whitespace
Text=Character intended for leaving empty space. Well-typeset text has as much space as needed: 146%{{-}}too little, 146{{_}}%{{-}}too much, {{%|146}}{{-}}just okay. That’s why spaces are different too. Some of them are non-break: do{{_}}not{{_}}stretch in justified text, do{{_}}not{{_}}wrap to next line.\n\nSpaces usually have no{{_}}graphical representation and just move caret. But if underline is on, or if the script has a common line ([[ps:Ogam|Ogham]]), spaces might be visible.\n\nIn ''Unicodia'' spaces are marked exactly by body’s size, so narrowness is deceptive. Hair space U+200A is often enough to leave a little space.\n\nAll spaces are [[pt:spacing|spacing]] characters. Zero-width spaces that do not{{_}}leave space are classified as [[pt:format|format]] characters rather than spaces.

[Term.abc]
Name=collation
Text=Standard order for ordering text strings. The oldest known is [[ps:Ugar|Ugaritic]].\n\nOrigin of order:\n* [[ps:Latn|Latin]], [[ps:Grek|Greek]], [[ps:Cyrl|Cyrillic]], [[ps:Arab|Arabic]], [[ps:Geor|Georgian]], [[ps:Armn|Armenian]], [[ps:Hebr|Hebrew]], [[ps:Ethi|Ethiopic]]{{-}}from [[ps:Phnx|Phoenician]]. Phoenician order probably comes from earlier Semitic languages.\n* [[ps:Runr|Runes]] (''Futhark''){{-}}unknown;\n* All [[pt:brahmic|Brahmic abugidas]], [[pt:cjk|CJK]] by pronunciation{{-}}phonological order, from throat {{t|k}} to teeth {{t|s}};\n* CJK by [[ps:Hani|writing]]{{-}}using so-called radicals.\n\nUnicode writes letters in order close to alphabetical, but does{{_}}not{{_}}codify rules of alphabetical sorting. If an alphabetical order changes, the country itself changes it without consulting Unicode Consortium.

[Term.abjad]
Name=consonant script, abjad
Text=Script where only consotant phonemes are written. Vowels are either omitted completely, or written with optional vowel marks. ''Abjad'' name comes from autonym of [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] alphabet{{-}}أبجد ''abjadiya''.\n\nDespite obvious drawbacks, consonant script has some advantages.\n* In Semitic languages{{-}}[[ps:Phnx|Phoenician]], [[ps:Hebr|Hebrew]], Arabic{{-}}root is a skeleton of consonants, and vowels work as suffixes. For example, in Arabic ''jihad'' is done by ''mujahid''.\n* Easier to assemble large empires{{-}}difference in dialects are smoothened.\n* Differences are smoothened not{{_}}just in space, but in time{{-}}century-long inscriptions better correspond to modern language.\n* This script is shorter, that’s important when “paper” and “pens” are poor.\n\nMany abjads have letters ''matres lectionis (mothers of reading)''{{-}}consonant letters meaning vowel phoneme. One of variants recorded in Hebrew: ''bayt'' → ''bet'' (house), and Yod letter was reinterpreted to words where diphtong never existed. Other variant is by articulation: [[ps:Grek|Greek]] letter Iota goes back to Phoenician letter Yod sometines meaning “i”. When vowel marks appeared, ''matres lectionis'' did{{_}}not{{_}}disappear, but started to complement them.

[Term.abugida]
Name=abugida
Text=Scholars do{{_}}not{{_}}agree with definition of abugida, and the widest of them is: [[pt:syllabic|syllabic]] script where similar syllables are written with similar characters.\n\n[[pt:brahmic|Brahmic scripts]] '''are surely''' abugidas.\n\n[[ps:Ethi|Ethiopic]] and [[ps:Cans|Canadian syllabary]] are abugidas '''in most classifications'''.\n\n[[ps:Thaa|Thaana]], [[ps:Wara|Warang Citi]] and [[ps:Sora|Sora Sompeng]] are abugidas '''in some sources'''.\n\n[[ps:Hang|Hangul]] and [[ps:Yiii|Yi]] are '''definitely not{{_}}abugidas'''.\n\nInteresting fact: the word “abugida” comes from Ge’ez (old Ethiopic) {{sm|አቡጊዳ}} (a-bu-gi-da){{-}}so some linguists deny the right for name “abugida” to the script where this name came from!

[Term.acrophonic]
Name=acrophonic character
Text=For letter: its name is some word starting with the letter itself, like in [[ps:Thai|Thai]], old [[ps:Cyrl|Cyrillic]]/[[ps:Glag|Glagolitic]] and [[ps:Phnx|Phoenician]].\n\nFor numbers and other things: the character comes from the first letter of term: For example, '''№''' sign comes from Latin ''numero''.

[Term.alphabet]
Name=alphabetical script
Text=Linear script that writes both consonants and vowels. The first known alphabet is [[ps:Grek|Greek]].\n\nNon-linear script where consonants and vowels are joined into syllables is considered alphabet by some sources ([[ps:Thaa|Thaana]], [[ps:Hang|Hangul]]), or by nobody at all ([[ps:Laoo|Lao]]).\n\nWith all adantages, alphabets have a severe disadvantage. Because of pronunciation shifts, complex historical othography appears, and it must be reformed sometimes. Well, [[ps:Cyrl|Russian]] Yat '''ѣ''' was a separate phoneme that completely disappeared in 18th century, and was dropped from writing in 1918, more than a century later. Spelling of [[ps:Latn|English]] and French is mostly historical.

[Term.altcode]
Name=Alt codes
Text=Method of character entry by its code introduced in BIOS (firmware) of IBM PC. NT family of Windows has three types of codes.\n\n'''DOS codes'''\n\nHolding {{kb|Alt}} (left{{-}}everywhere, right{{-}}depends on keyboard layout), type on '''numeric''' keypad '''decimal''' character code from 1 to 255. For example, {{k|Alt|51}} makes digit 3.\n\nThe encoding is common for all users, is one of DOS encodings (437, 866 etc) and depends on chosen language for non-Unicode applications. Codes 1 to 31 and 127 make printable versions of those characters: 1={{em|☺}}.\n\n'''Windows codes'''\n\nHolding {{kb|Alt}}, type on numeric keypad {{k|'''0'''}}, then '''decimal''' character code 32 to 255. {{k|Alt|0240}} makes letter ð.\n\nEncoding is Windows-1252 regardless of Windows settings. Code 127 does{{_}}not{{_}}work. Codes 128 to 159 are miscellaneous typography characters. The rest are identical to [[pt:latin1|Latin-1]].\n\n'''Unicode codes'''\n\nExperimental, do{{_}}not{{_}}work in all applications. To make them work, into registry key\n: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Control Panel\\Input Method\nadd '''string''' parameter EnableHexNumpad=1 and reboot the computer.\n\nHolding {{kb|Alt}}, type {{kb|Num+}} and '''hexadecimal''' character code. Letters A…F are entered from main keyboard. Only [[pt:bmp|Basic Plane]] works. {{k|Alt|+262F}} makes Yin and yang {{em|☯}}.

[Term.appentry]
Name=application-specific input methods
Text='''Libre and Microsoft Office'''\n\nType hexadecimal character code (for example, 262F) and press {{kb|Alt|X}}. The code will be converted to character{{-}}in this case {{em|☯}} U+262F Yin and yang.\n\n'''UnicodeInput'''\n\nResident program for Windows that solves drawbacks of [[pt:altcode|Alt codes]]. Sits in notification area, triggers on {{kb|Alt|Num+}} key and enters any Unicode character to any program.\n\n[[https://www.fileformat.info/tool/unicodeinput/index.htm|Download here]]

[Term.arguable]
Name=script of arguable type
Text=For five scripts sources do{{_}}not{{_}}agree what they are.\n\n[[ps:Hang|Hangul]] ''(Korean)''{{-}}[[pt:syllabic|syllabic]] ''(Unicode)'' or [[pt:alphabet|alphabetical]] ''(Omniglot, English Wikipedia)''.\n\n[[ps:Thaa|Thaana]] ''(Maldivian)''{{-}}[[pt:abjad|consonant]] ''(Omniglot)'', [[pt:abugida|abugida]] ''(English Wikipedia)'' or alphabet ''(Unicode)''.\n\n[[ps:Wara|Warang Citi]] and [[ps:Sora|Sora Sompeng]]{{-}}alphabet ''(English Wikipedia, Unicode)'' or abugida ''(Omniglot)''. Both are Indian, dropped most features of [[pt:brahmic|Brahmic abugidas]], but left inherent vowel {{t|a}}.\n\n[[ps:Phag|Phags-Pa]] (Mongolian square){{-}}abugida ''(Unicode, Omniglot)'' or alphabet ''(English Wikipedia)''. The only remaining signs of abugida are inherent vowel and joining of letters into syllables.

[Term.ascii]
Name=ASCII

[Term.brahmic]
Name=Brahmic abugida, Indic script
Text=Scholars disagree in definition of [[pt:abugida|abugida]]. But they are unanimous in one thing: '''group of scripts that came from [[ps:Brah|Brahmi]]''' are definitely abugidas.\n\nIn Semitic languages word’s root consists of consonants, and vowels are used for suffixes: ''Islam'' is practiced by ''Muslim'' in [[ps:Arab|Arabic]]. It was natural for them to introduce [[pt:abjad|consonant]] script. When [[ps:Armi|Aramaic]] script went eastwards and collided with Indo-European languages, syllabic script appeared that spread in some way across all South-East Asia except [[pt:cjk|China, Korea and Japan]].\n\nFeatures of Brahmic abugidas:\n* Consonant letter means syllable with some inherent vowel, the rest are added with vowel marks: [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]] <nobr>ka {{sm|क}} + i {{sm| ि}} = ki {{sm|कि}}</nobr>.\n* To get a lone consonant, [[pt:virama|virama]] sign is used: <nobr>ka {{sm|क}} + {{sm|्}} = k {{sm|क्}}</nobr>.\n* Other diacritical marks: anusvara (nasal sound after consonant), candrabindu (the vowel is nasalized), nukta (borrowed phonemes; letter “k” in this word is borrowed and is written with nukta), visarga (phoneme {{t|h}} in Sanskrit).\n* Written left to right, unlike Semitic languages.\n* Alphabetical order is phonological: first vowels, then consonants from throat {{t|k}} to teeth {{t|s}}, and finally aspirate {{t|h}}.\n* Own [[pt:number|numerals]] are frequent, both actually used and [[pt:obsolete|obsolete]].\n\nThere are several methods to convey complex syllables:\n* Using virama (something like pa-n_-da): lone consonant is a separate syllable ([[ps:Tglg|Baybayin]]).\n* Using consonant conjunct (pa-nda): Devanagari {{sm|क्ष}} kša. It is typed as there is no ligature: ka+virama+ša{{-}}but in explicit form virama is present in the end of words only. Often in the end of words it’s also absent (inherent vowel becomes silent). Letter R often becomes small in these conjuncts. Small initial R ({{sm|र्क}} rka) is called ''repha'', small subjoined R ({{sm|क्र}} kra) is ''rakar''.\n* Using final consonant (pan-da){{-}}[[ps:Phag|Phags-Pa]]. No virama. Virtual virama or other means of making initial consonant conjuncts may exist.\n* Incomplete, badly conveying complex syllables (pa-da){{-}}[[ps:Bugi|Buginese]]. Some specimen degenerated to consonant scripts.\n* Lost inherent vowel (pa-nᵊ-da){{-}}through reform ([[ps:Laoo|Lao]]) or through natural evolution ([[ps:Guru|Gurmukhi]]). In the latter case it may not{{_}}always distinguish {{t|na}} and {{t|n}} and use virama in dictionaries.

[Term.bidi]
Name=bidirectional text
Text=Text that contains at least one character written right-to-left. Algorithm of processing such a text is complex, let’s describe it in general.\n\n1. Split text to independent lines.\n\n2. Split every line into nested segments: the entire line is left-to-right, there are segments right-to-left inside it, they contain left-to-right segments, and so on. In iOS there was a bug: deep nesting of segments rebooted phone.\n\n3. Isolate European numbers, give them direction left-to-right.\n\n4. Give direction to the rest of characters. Reflect if they go right-to-left and are mirrored.\n\n5. Execute higher-level protocols{{-}}for example, define direction of tables.\n\nFor example: “XX,YY 1.00&lt;2.00 XX” = “ثث,حح 1.00&lt;2.00 ثث”\n\n'''What to do for a simple user?'''\n\n* If you write a Hebrew quotation in English text and the system formats it incorrectly, start the quotation with LRE/RLE, and finish with PDF.\n* You can use LRM, RLM and ALM for small bits of text. These are empty characters with strongly-specified direction, and this direction will be maintained until the system finds a character whose direction is known.\n* If you want to write from right to left in a left-to-right language or vice-versa, start the text with LRO/RLO, and finish with PDF. Avoid this notation, it’s a security issue.

[Term.birman]
Name=Ilya Birman’s typography layout
Text=Comes in two anguages, English (USA) and Russian, their special keys are identical. Types the following characters using {{k|AltGr}} in Windows, Alt in MacOS:\n\n* European letters and punctuation ó ò ö ŏ ǒ ő õ ç ß ¡ ¿\n* pre-1918 Cyrillic ѣ і ѵ ѳ\n* mathematics − ± ≠ ≈ ′ ″ × · ∞\n* some superscripts and fractions ¹²³ ½⅓¼\n* typography punctuation «» “” „“ ‹› ‘’ • — –\n* currencies € £ ₽ ¢\n* arrows ← → ↓ ↑\n* MacOS interface ⌘ ⌥ ⌃ ⇧\n* entry of ASCII characters from Russian layout [ { $\n* measurement units ⌀ ° ‰\n* intellectual property signs ™ ©\n\nVersion 3.7, last as of January 2022, has a [[pt:private|private-use]] character on {{k|AltGr|G}}, Apple logo.\n\n[[https://ilyabirman.net/typography-layout/|Download here]]

[Term.bmp]
Name=BMP = Basic Multilingual Plane
Text=Unicode [[pt:plane|plane]] #0 containing characters 0000…FFFD. The most frequent characters of alive languages are encoded in Basic Plane, allowing processing of these languages right in [[pt:utf16|UTF-16]].\n\nUnicode had beed two-byte encoding until 1996, that gave capacity of {{n|65536}} characters. When the question of extension was overdue, several progressive languages and libraries (Java, Windows{{_}}NT) already adopted Unicode, and that led to compromise in the form of Basic Plane and UTF-16.\n\nAs of Unicode{{_}}16, only 16 positions are unallocated, 2FE0…2FEF.\n\nBasic Plane contains [[pt:ascii|ASCII]], [[pt:latin1|Latin-1]] and {{n|6400}} [[pt:private|private-use]] characters.

[Term.bom]
Name=BOM = byte order mark
Text=Character U+FEFF. It may (not must) be put in the beginning of Unicode text file to indicate [[pt:serialization|serialization]] format. Encoded byte order mark looks this way:\n* EF{{_}}BB{{_}}BF{{-}}[[pt:utf8|UTF-8]];\n* FE{{_}}FF{{-}}[[pt:utf16|UTF-16BE]] (most significant byte first);\n* FF{{_}}FE, then everything except 00{{_}}00{{-}}UTF-16LE (least significant byte first);\n* 00{{_}}00{{_}}FE{{_}}FF{{-}}[[pt:utf32|UTF-32BE]];\n* FF{{_}}FE{{_}}00{{_}}00{{-}}UTF-32LE.\n\n[[pt:utf7|UTF-7]] and [[pt:punycode|Punycode]] do{{_}}not{{_}}occur as a format of text files. UTF-32 is extremely rare.\n\nBinary files strictly specify serialization format, and do{{_}}not{{_}}need byte order mark.

[Term.character]
Name=characters, not glyphs
Text=Character is a unit of meaning. Glyph is a specific image contained in font and drawn on screen/paper.\n\nCharacters and glyphs do{{_}}not{{_}}relate one to one. ''Nastaliq'', a style of [[ps:Arab|Arabic]] text, requires thousands of glyphs in a font. But the encoding has just two hundred characters that convey meaning. And vice-versa, different characters may share a glyph despite [[pt:unification|unification]].

[Term.casefolding]
Name=case folding
Text=String conversion used for (mostly) locale-independent case-insensitive string somparison. It has two main types and one auxiliary:\n* Simple (does{{_}}not{{_}}change length): <big>ᾨ → ᾠ</big>\n* Full (unfolds [[pt:ligature|ligatures]]): <big>ᾨ → ὠ ι</big>\n* Turkic (special rules for Turkish and Azeri): <big>I → ı</big>\n\nUsually case folding is conversion to lower case. But for [[ps:Cher|Cherokee]] it is conversion to upper case: capital letter appeared first.\n\nCase folding is idempotent: CF(CF(s))=CF(s), i.e. the second folding does nothing.

[Term.cjk]
Name=CJK = Chinese, Japanese, Korean
Text=Group of scripts close to [[ps:Hani|Chinese ideographs]]. It contains syllabic [[ps:Kana|Katakana]] and [[ps:Hira|Hiragana]], and [[ps:Hang|Hangul]] of [[pt:arguable|arguable]] type. Among historical{{-}}[[ps:Tang|Tangut]], [[ps:Kits|Khitan]], [[ps:Nshu|Nüshu]].\n\nFeatures of CJK:\n* sweeping writing with brush and ink (except Nüshu);\n* characters are monospace{{-}}aligned to invisible grid, regardless of number of strokes. Borrowed letters are often halfwidth{{-}}take half of this cell;\n* written initially right-to-left in columns; now ''usually'' left-to-right in rows. Even nowadays Japanese comics ''manga'' are read right-to-left;\n* characters differ from country to country; Unicode leaves these peculiarities to fonts;\n* as characters did{{_}}not{{_}}fit into 256 [[pt:codepoint|positions]], specific encodings for ideographs existed.

[Term.codepoint]
Name=code point
Text=The term “character” is ambiguous, so Unicode refers to its own codes (numbers from 0 to {{n|1114111}}₁₀={{h|10FFFF}}₁₆) as '''code points'''. A code point can be:\n* [[pt:graphic|Graphic]] (printable) character.\n* [[pt:control|Control]] command.\n* [[pt:format|Formatting]] command.\n* Left for [[pt:private|private]] use.\n* Left for [[pt:utf16|UTF-16]] surrogate pairs.\n* [[pt:noncharacter|Non-character]] (removed from encoding).\n* Vacant (reserved).\n\nSee also [[pt:unification|unification]] (writing different characters with one code point) and duplication (writing a single character with different code points).

[Term.control]
Name=control character

[Term.convertibility]
Name=convertibility
Text=Unicode is used for interchange with other text standards: national, international, vendor-specific. If variations of one character get different codes in such standards, they are disunified in Unicode. This makes possible conversion between encodings through Unicode, lossless round-trip conversion (from encoding to Unicode and vice-versa).\n\nHowever, sometimes a single code point of other encoding converts to several characters of Unicode, or vice-versa.

[Term.country]
Name=country codes
Text=Unicode Consortium does not define for themselves what is a country and how its flag should look. Instead they take two-letter country codes from ISO{{_}}3166. It contains all recognized countries, some dependent territories, and some territories of disputable status. Among unusual reasons:\n* UA (Ukraine), BY (Belarus): UN members within the USSR, kept their codes after gaining independence.\n* KI (Kiribati, formerly GE=Gilbert Islands) and others: got a new code after liberation and rename.\n* PS (Palestine): way to recognition.\n* DG (Diego Garcia) and others: telecommunication sites.\n* EA (Ceuta and Melilla), IC (Canary Islands): special customs rules different from common-European.\n* GG (Guernsey) and others: issue their own postal stamps.\n* XK (Kosovo): temporary code used by Europe.\n\nImage on country emoji (usually flag) is up to vendor.

[Term.code]
Name=codes and shorthand
Text=Code is another form of ordinary written text. In other words, we turn spoken words to letters using ordinary spelling rules, and then encode. Purpose of such encoding is different:\n* communication and signaling (flag semaphore, Morse code);\n* aids for disabled ([[ps:Brai|Braille]] embossings, gesture alphabet);\n* shorthand{{-}}writing done by specially trained scribe and designed to keep pace with spoken words ([[ps:Dupl|Duployan system]]).\n\nSuch systems often span many languages, and different languages have different code tables. For example, even British Braille differs from American.

[Term.combining]
Name=combining mark
Text=Dependent character affixed to the base one. Marks are used for:\n\n* diacritics{{-}}marks added to the base letter;\n* vowel marks in [[pt:abjad|consonant]] scripts and [[pt:abugida|abugidas]];\n* various “hacks” using [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] in fonts: for example, letter + variation selector = letter of other shape.\n\nUnicode divides marks into [[pt:spacing|spacing]], non-spacing and enclosing.\n\nCombining marks are put in several ways in fonts, starting from the most beautiful:\n* Ligature: special [[pt:character|glyph]] for marked character.\n* Glyph substitution: when put to glyph A, mark B gets shape C. This is used for “squished” diacritics on capital letters, adjusting size of Indic vowel marks.\n* Anchor: binding point that is put manually.\n* And default anchor: the mark is put at positive or negative coordinates. When drawn relative to caret, it finds itself in the right place.\n\nUnicode cannot cover several characters with one mark, but exploits some font mechanisms for this:\n* Some marks are placed halfway above character, and the other half hangs out, so they cover two characters: {{sm|a͡b}}.\n* The first character is covered with initial fragment, the second one etc with repeating one, and the last one with final fragment. This method is implemented badly in most fonts.

[Term.cursive]
Name=cursive
Text=Writing style where the scribe quickly writes something down, especially with fragile goose quill. Features vary from language to language, but generally:\n* Simple shapes of letters.\n* Corners are rounded, except sharp ones.\n* Scribe seldom lifts quill{{-}}hence joined letters, one stroke followed back and forth, loops in ascenders and descenders.\n* Letters join into [[pt:ligature|ligatures]].\n\n''Italic'' type comes from cursive, and in some languages is named with same word as cursive.\n\nDo{{_}}not{{_}}confuse with ''shorthand'' where the scribe keeps pace with speech but makes sacrifices: hard training, lined paper, decoding in calm conditions…

[Term.deprecated]
Name=deprecated character
Text=Character whose use is strongly discouraged.\n\nOne of Unicode’s [[pt:stability|stability]] guarantees: once the character is assigned, it won’t move or disappear. If the character is bad, it becomes deprecated. The reasons for deprecation are different.\n\nUnicode Consortium consists of people of Western culture, and they can only refer to studies of rare language specialists{{-}}it happened for five characters of [[ps:Arab|Arabic]], [[ps:Tibt|Tibetan]] and [[ps:Khmr|Khmer]].\n\nTwo technical angle brackets are banned to prevent confusion with mathematical ones. Also deprecated: language [[pk:E0000|tag]] (made more mess than solved problems), some characters of [[pt:bidi|bidirectional writing]] (other algorithm is proposed), and Latin [[pt:ligature|ligature]] '''ŉ''' (Dutch and Afrikaans have lots of similar unencoded abbreviations, problems with [[pt:normalization|normalization]], character type “letter with punctuation” was dropped){{-}}total 15 as{{_}}of Unicode{{_}}16.\n\nSeveral cases of returning characters to use are known:\n* “Tags” block{{-}}it was used for specifying language. Returned for [[pt:emoji|emoji]] of regional flags (for example, Scotland), leaving one character under ban.\n* 0340, 0341 (marks of falling/rising tone). Replaced with ordinary diacritics à and á. Since Unicode{{_}}5.2 are just not{{_}}recommended.\n* 17D3 (Khmer mark ''bathamasat''). With advent of [[pt:precomposed|precomposed]] characters of [[pk:19E0|moon calendar]] it was deprecated in Unicode{{_}}4.0. Since Unicode{{_}}5.2 is just not{{_}}recommended{{-}}maybe because calendar ligatures are bulky. Author of ''Unicodia'' had troubles finding font where ligatures fit into cell.\n\nDo{{_}}not{{_}}confuse with [[pt:obsolete|obsolete]].

[Term.dynamic]
Name=dynamic composition
Text=Unicode achieves such an ambitious goal as [[pt:universality|universality]] by using dynamic composition{{-}}character’s image is constructed on-the-fly from parts. Sometimes [[pt:precomposed|precomposed]] characters are made for convenience, but generally <nobr>A + ¨ = Ä</nobr>.\n\nTo check text equality under different encoding variants, [[pt:normalization|normalization]] algorithms are used.

[Term.egyp]
Name=Egyptian hieroglyphs
Text=In early 2025, principles for encoding [[ps:Egyp|Egyptian hieroglyphs]] were written.\n\n* A hieroglyph may have plenty of forms: a man bowing down slightly or deeply, a snake with 2, 3 or more coils. These forms are encoded at the discretion of scholars.\n* A hieroglyph is encoded in the most detailed form. Really fine details like armbands are omitted at the discretion of scholars.\n* Size and colour are not encoded.\n* If those fine details really matter, Unicode is just not for you. Include the image.\n* Similar signs with different meanings are encoded separately. A circle may mean tambourine, ring, pit…\n* If a hieroglyph can be constructed by mirroring, rotation and combining, it does not get a separate [[pt:codepoint|code point]].\n* But if such form has a special meaning (leg+knife=injury), it will get.\n* Hieroglyphs are divided into three types: core, legacy and extended.\n* A hieroglyph is extended if it’s attested at least three times, or is included in a major list like ''Thot'' or ''JSesh'', or is commonly used by scholars. Then it receives the right for encoding.\n* A hieroglyph is core if it’s verified with a reliable image (photo or trustworthy tracing). If it’s encoded in several forms, some of the forms may be excluded from the core list.\n* Trivial forms and combinations from Unicode{{_}}5.2 are legacy. The rest of Unicode{{_}}5.2 (based on Gardiner’s list) is automatically core.

[Term.emoji]
Name=emoji
Text=From Japanese {{sm|絵}} ''e{{-}}picture'' + {{sm|文字}} ''moji{{-}}character, symbol''.\n\nInvented by cellphone operator NTT DoCoMo about 1999 for economy of characters in SMS. Western operators started to develop their sets in 2004, and in 2010 DoCoMo’s encoding was brought to Unicode{{_}}6.0. Many emoji are specific to Japan: bowing businessman {{em|🙇}}, beginner driver sign {{em|🔰}}… Others changed their meaning outside Japan: highest school grade {{em|💯}} turned to “fully agree”.\n\nSeveral old pre-2010 pictograms are guaranteed to show as emoji only with U+FE0F character (''aka'' variation selector 16).\n\nAll emoji are [[pt:spacing|spacing]] characters.

[Term.efficiency]
Name=efficiency
Text=Unicode strives to make efficient implementations possible. Particularly:\n\n* Unicode does{{_}}not{{_}}have shiftable states. This simplifies access and search. Contrary, in telegraph code 1 means E in letter page and 3 in figure page.\n* Main forms of [[pt:serialization|serialization]], [[pt:utf8|UTF-8]] and [[pt:utf16|UTF-16]], are self-synchronizing. This simplifies access and search.\n* Character codes are numbers from 0 to 10FFFF₁₆. Even if work right in UTF-8/16 is impossible, lookup tables still work.\n* Processing of ASCII is possible in UTF-8 without decoding. Processing of [[pt:bmp|most languages]] is possible in UTF-16 without decoding.\n* Characters of one script are grouped together as far as practical.\n* Punctuation marks are common for all scripts.\n* Format characters are described as much as possible.\n* [[pt:format|Format]] characters that change inner state are avoided. This is not{{_}}always possible, [[pt:bidi|bidirectinal writing]] is inherently complex.

[Term.format]
Name=format character

[Term.graphic]
Name=graphic character, printable character
Text=Character that is written on screen and paper. Any except [[pt:control|control]], [[pt:format|format]], line and paragraph separators{{-}}even spaces and invisible [[pt:combining|marks]].\n\nZero-width space is considered format rather than space{{-}}so it is '''not'''{{_}}graphic.\n\nParadox: invisible marks are simultaneously graphic and [[pt:ignorable|default-ignorable]].\n\nDo{{_}}not{{_}}confuse with [[pt:pseudographics|pseudographics]].

[Term.inclusion]
Name=inclusion and diversity
Text=One of [[pt:emoji|emoji]] principles which, however, did{{_}}not{{_}}exist from the start. It means that emoji must support racial, gender and other minorities as much as it is possible without combinatorial explosion: families of various racial composition would have been {{n|4225}} glyphs. ''(Unicode{{_}}{{version}} contains {{nemoji}} emoji.)''\n\nInitially people are displayed with unrealistic skin tone, usually yellow. One of five skin tones is given with special modifier: {{em|🏃}}+{{em|🏿}} ={{_}}{{em|🏃🏿}}.\n\nMost emoji are genderless; if you want you may add gender with {{em|🧙}}+ZWJ+{{em|♂}}+VS16. There are only two purely female emoji: {{em|🤱}}{{_}}breast feeding and {{em|🧕}}{{_}}woman in headscarf. Unicode{{_}}13 (2020) made genderless {{em|👰}}{{_}}bride, {{em|🤵}}{{_}}person in tuxedo and others. Unicode 14 (2021) added more genderless emoji.\n\nPeople with invisible skin{{-}}{{em|🏂}} snowboarder{{-}}should also support gender and skintone modifiers, even if it will{{_}}not{{_}}change glyph.\n\nIf emoji contains several people, gender and skin tone are implemented case-by-case. In breast feeding {{em|🤱}} baby’s skin is covered, kiss {{em|💏}} is assembled from scratch as {{em|👩}}+ZWJ+{{em|❤}}+VS16+ZWJ+{{em|💋}}+ZWJ+{{em|👨}}.\n\nOrder of modifiers in ZWJ sequences: base character, skin tone (without ZWJ), hair, other colours {{em|⬛}}, gender, movement direction {{em|⬅}}+VS16. As of Unicode{{_}}16, four coloured emoji are standardized, for example black cat {{em|🐈}}+ZWJ+{{em|⬛}}.\n\nFaces {{em|😂}} are{{_}}not{{_}}inclusive and always yellow.

[Term.ignorable]
Name=default-ignorable character
Text=Unicode is large and is contantly expanding: version {{version}} has {{nchars}} characters. So even a large font collection does{{_}}not{{_}}support the entire Unicode.\n\nIf no glyph found in fonts, the character is usually displayed as [[pt:tofu|tofu]]{{-}}white box. '''But some characters are just omitted.'''\n\nMost default-ignorable characters are [[pt:format|format]], but nonspacing [[pt:combining|marks]] are present. Default-ignorable characters fall into these categories:\n\n* Characters that convey ancillary semantics: soft hyphen 00AD, grapheme joiner 034F, [[pk:E0000|tags]]…\n* Writing [[pt:bidi|direction]] tags: marks LRM and RLM.\n* Font mechanisms that are safe to skip silently: zero width joiner ([[pt:zwj|ZWJ]]), variation selectors (VS), [[ps:Hang|Korean]] jamo fillers. Pilot (person+ZWJ+plane) will be displayed as person+plane {{em|🧑✈️}} when ligature is missing no matter if ZWJ is present in the font.\n* Zero width space ZWSP; [[pt:bom|byte order mark]] BOM that’s also zero width space; zero width non-joiner ZWNJ.\n* Characters for complex [[pk:1BCA0|shorthand]] and [[pk:1D100|music]] formatting.\n\nThese characters '''are{{_}}not''' default-ignorable:\n* All having graphic form, all [[pt:spacing|spacing]].\n* [[pt:control|Control]], line separators.\n* Characters that work in font mechanisms that are impossible to skip silently{{-}}for example, virtual [[pt:virama|viramas]]. If the virama disappears, “kta” turns to “kata”.\n* Characters for complex formatting of [[ps:Egyp|Egyptian hieroglyphs]].

[Term.hiero]
Name=ideographic script
Text=As Artemy Lebedev said, pictogram of drinking glass means drinking glass. Ideogram means drinking glass, glass as material, fragile, drunkenness… Both are called “hieroglyphs” sometimes. Chinese ideograph “man+tree” mean “rest”.\n\nWriting short thoughts with pictograms and ideograms surrounds us everywhere: on road signs, in interfaces of appiances and software. But generally this writing has{{_}}not{{_}}advanced far from pictograms. Writing speech with ideograms is two steps forward: picture may mean a concept, and they are ordered by position in language, not{{_}}by{{_}}mutual relation. If “hunter killed a deer with a spear”, a sign for killing is made, and the spear is drawn the last, not{{_}}between hunter and deer.\n\nRead about '''[[ps:Hani|CJK ideographs]]''' how Chinese turned drawbacks of ideograph to advantages.\n\nTransition from ideographs to [[pt:syllabic|syllabic script]] is simple: it’s enough to write an unknown word with suitable one-syllable ideographs. All major civilizations of Eurasia except Chinese abandoned ideographs by the beginning of common era.

[Term.latin1]
Name=Latin-1

[Term.ligature]
Name=ligature
Text=Ligature is several characters fused into one:\n\n1. In typography{{-}}character consisting of several. For example, ampersand '''&''' is a ligature of Latin ''et'' “and”.\n\n2. In fonts{{-}}[[pt:character|glyph]] meaning a sequence of several [[pt:codepoint|code points]]. For example, in some fonts typing “fi” makes ligature '''ﬁ'''. [[pt:brahmic|Brahmic abugidas]] have such ligatures in large numbers.\n\nAll ligatures are [[pt:spacing|spacing]] characters.\n\n[[pt:casefolding|Case folding]] ''can'' break ligatures.

[Term.logical]
Name=logical order
Text=Unicode stores characters in logical order that roughly corresponds to order of pronunciation or typing via keyboard. This order does not{{_}}correspond to on-screen progression order, and algorithms of [[pt:bidi|bi-direcitional text]] are designed to put characters in visual order.\n\n[[pt:combining|Combining marks]] are stored after their characters.\n\nException: some [[pt:brahmic|Brahmic]] abugidas ([[ps:Thai|Thai]], [[ps:Laoo|Lao]]) traditionally store text in visual order: some vowels are situated before consonant, even if read after.

[Term.minuscule]
Name=minuscule writing
Text=Writing style with low line and plenty of ascenders and descenders. Was used in Middle Ages for economy of parchment, widespread in [[ps:Latn|Latin]], [[ps:Geor|Georgian]], [[ps:Grek|Greek]]. In Latin it turned to small letters. In contrast, Georgian is bicameral just technically.\n\nIf a script generally has big ascenders ([[ps:Lana|Tai Tham]]), this is{{_}}not{{_}}considered minuscule.

[Term.mono]
Name=character cell
Text=Imaginable cell monospace text is divided to.\n\n[[pt:cjk|CJK]] also divides text into “character cells”, but the term first of all is used for typewriters, text modes of computers, alphanumeric printers.

[Term.noncharacter]
Name=non-character
Text=66 code points are ''non-characters'': *FFFE and *FFFF in all seventeen planes, and FDD0…FDEF. They will never reappear in Unicode.\n\nProgrammers '''may''' use then as error codes, substitution marks, “weights” that affect sorting or something else internal for program, recode to [[pt:utf8|UTF-8]] or [[pt:utf16|UTF-16]]. If the program does{{_}}not{{_}}use this code, it may treat it as normal unknown character.\n\nIt is '''prohibited''' to enter these characters with keyboard, use them in inter-software exchange. [[pt:bom|Byte order mark]] works because character FFFE is absent in Unicode.

[Term.nontext]
Name=non-text notation
Text=Writing of non-text information: music ([[pk:1D100|notes]]), technical drawings ([[pk:2300|technical symbols]]), gestures ([[ps:Sgnw|SingWriting]]).\n\nUnicode works with plain text and is{{_}}not{{_}}designed for encoding such information. But encoding of such characters shortens PDF files, extends functionality of general-purpose systems{{-}}forums, instant messengers, vector editors.

[Term.normalization]
Name=normalization
Text=String conversion for fuzzy comparison. Unicode has four types of normalization:\n\n1. NFD = canonical decomposition: disassembly of [[pt:precomposed|precomposed]] characters, [[ps:Hang|Hangul]] syllables into jamo (letters), replacement of some signs like Ohm and Ångström, sorting of [[pt:combining|marks]] into standard order.\n\n2. NFC = canonical composition. NFD, then assembly of precomposed characters and Hangul syllables.\n\n3. NFKD = compatible decomposition. NFD + disassembly of [[pt:ligature|ligatures]], replacement of letterlike characters with letters, subscripts with numbers, half-width to standard and so on.\n\n4. NFKC = compatible composition. NFKD, then '''canonical''' composition of characters, as in NFC.\n\nAll four normalizations are idempotent: NFD(NFD(s))=NFD(s) and so on. In ither words, the second normalization will do nothing.

[Term.number]
Name=number character
Text=Unicode divides number characters into three classes.\n\n* Decimal positional digits{{-}}both standard [[pt:ascii|ASCII]] digits 0…9 and digits of other scripts ([[ps:Deva|Devanagari]] ०…९).\n* The same digits used in special contexts{{-}}for example, in superscripts and subscripts.\n* Other digits and numbers: characters of non-decimal, non-positional and partly positional numeral systems (Roman, Aegean, counting rods), [[pt:precomposed|precomposed]] numbers like <big>½</big>…\n\n[[pt:cjk|CJK]] numbers may be normal (primarily means number), rare (sometimes means number), anti-forgery (used in accounting documents to prevent changing numbers), Zhuang and Vietnamese.\n\nCharacters whose main use is non-numeric (for example, Slavic numbers like А̄) are{{_}}not{{_}}treated as numbers by Unicode.

[Term.obsolete]
Name=obsolete character
Text=Character that fell out of use. For example, [[ps:Cyrl|Cyrillic]] Yat <big>'''ѣ'''</big> that turned to other characters in all languages: '''е''' in Russian, '''і''' in Ukrainian.\n\nIt is legitimate to use it in apporpriate context: “бѣлый, блѣдный, бѣдный бѣсъ…”\n\nDo{{_}}not{{_}}confuse with [[pt:deprecated|deprecated character]].

[Term.plaintext]
Name=plain text
Text=Plain text is a sequence of character codes, contrary to ''rich/formatted text'' that may contain visual elements like colours, fonts, hyperlinks. If those elements are stripped from rich text, everything remaining is plain text.\n\nTo turn plain text data into a line of visible text, a process named ''rendering'' is involved. If you feed the plain text to another implementation of renderer, the text will probably look different.\n\nUnicode standard contains two short phrases.\n\n1. The Unicode Standard encodes plain text.\n\n2. Plain text must contain enough information to permit the text to be rendered legibly, and nothing more.

[Term.plane]
Name=plane
Text=Character range from *0000 to *FFFD. The last two [[pt:codepoint|code points]] of each plane, *FFFE and *FFFF, are [[pt:noncharacter|non-characters]]. Due to [[pt:utf16|UTF-16]] limitations, Unicode has seventeen planes.\n\n* Plane #0 is '''[[pt:bmp|Basic Multilingual Plane]]''', and contains characters of most live languages. There are 16 unassigned positions in Unicode{{_}}16.\n* Plane #1 is '''Supplementary Multilingual Plane''', contains characters of rare and dead languages, as well as technical. It is less than {{%|50}} full.\n* Plane #2 is '''Supplementary Ideographic Plane''', contains only [[ps:Hani|CJK ideographs]], and is {{%|93}} full.\n* Plane #3 is '''Tertiary Ideographic Plane''', contains only CJK ideographs, and is {{%|14}} full.\n* Planes 4 to 0D are unused.\n* Plane 0E is '''Supplementary Special-purpose Plane''', and contains less than 500 special characters.\n* Planes 0E and 10 are left for [[pt:private|private use]].

[Term.precomposed]
Name=precomposed character
Text=Character and [[pt:combining|combining mark]] in one. For example, '''á''' is assembled from character and mark, and '''á''' is one precomposed character.\n\nThree main reasons for creating precomposed characters: other entity, compatibility and beauty.\n\n'''Other entity:''' Cyrillic Ё (''yo'') is not{{_}}Е (''ye'') with umlaut, so precomposed form exists. And Ю́ is just Ю (''yu'') with optional mark of accent, and there’s no{{_}}such precomposed character.\n\n'''Compatibility:''' if limited typography engine cannot lay marks, or limited keyboard driver types characters one at a time, precomposed characters are the only option. Precomposed characters are often taken from existing encodings.\n\n'''Beauty:''' mechanisms of laying marks are often imperfect, especially if designer did{{_}}not{{_}}foresee mark A on character B. And precomposed characters may become a warning for designer that ''this happens''.\n\nIn wider sense precomposed is a sequence of characters that may be displayed with styles, but it is encoded as a single character{{-}}for example, fraction <big>½</big>.\n\nAll precomposed characters are [[pt:spacing|spacing]]. See also [[pt:normalization|Normalization]].

[Term.private]
Name=private-use character
Text={{n|6400}} characters E000…F8FF in [[pt:bmp|Basic Plane]], and {{n|131068}} characters in two [[pt:plane|planes]] 0F and 10 (except *FFFE and *FFFF that are [[pt:noncharacter|non-characters]]) are given to everyone’s own needs.\n\nBy mutual negotiation, people can encode in these ranges everything they want, including characters that are non-eligible for Unicode: trademarks, fictional alphabets, rare characters and scripts, style tags, substitution marks. Unicode Consortium does{{_}}not{{_}}carry any responsibility for this. Let’s list four common uses of private characters.\n\n* OS vendors often encode own logos here. End users grab codes starting form E000 and up, and software vendors{{-}}starting from F8FF and down.\n* ConScript Unicode Registry and its ancestor Under-ConScript Unicode Registry{{-}}over 60 constructed languages, scripts from films, literature and games. Three of them, [[pk:101D0|Phaistos Disc]], [[ps:Shaw|Shavian alphabet]], [[ps:Dsrt|Deseret alphabet]], were accepted by real Unicode.\n* Standard Music Font Layout (SMuFL){{-}}open standard of musical fonts to abbreviate [[pk:1D100|sheet music]] PDFs.\n* Proposals to Unicode{{-}}block is not{{_}}yet allocated, and implemetation font has to be made.\n\nUnofficially [[pt:control|control]] characters are taken for custom control and format characters: in most cases they cannot appear in text.

[Term.pseudographics]
Name=pseudographics, box drawing
Text=Characters for drawing geometric shapes{{-}}lines, boxes, frames{{-}}in text mode. Were widely used to liven up text user interfaces.\n\nIn modern graphic operating systems they have no{{_}}sense: real graphics are available, and most fonts are proportional and lines do{{_}}not{{_}}link together precisely. But even today text consoles exist, and they have pseudographics inside.\n\nAll pseudographic characters are [[pt:spacing|spacing]].

[Term.punycode]
Name=Punycode
Text=Format of [[pt:serialization|serialization]] of a short Unicode string into a chain of printable ASCII characters.\n\nFirst all ASCII characters are written, then after dash the rest characters are encoded using a complex procedure.\n: München = Mnchen-3ya\n\nIf a string is purely ASCII, just a dash is appended:\n: test{{_}}={{_}}test-\n\nIf there are no ASCII characters, initial dash is omitted:\n: правда{{_}}={{_}}80aafi6cg\n\nUsed only in Internet domain name system, where byte economy and readability are more important than efficiency. Prefix “xn--” is prepended to international names:\n: münchen.example.com = xn--mnchen-3ya.example.com

[Term.reject]
Name=rejected proposals
Text=Unicode Consortium routinely rejects encoding [[pt:emoji|emoji]], less than a quarter are actually released, and folks are surprisingly creative in combining emoji ({{em|💦&#xFEFF;🔌&#xFEFF;🔥}} = utility bills). Flags and texts are no{{_}}longer encoded.\n\nTwo fictional scripts are rejected, Aiha by Ursula Le Guin and Klingon from ''Star Trek'' series. But Tengwar and Cirth invented by John Tolkien are en route to encoding.\n\n[[pk:101D0|Phaistos Disc]] was encoded for some reason, but three other unexplored scripts got rejection. Undeciphered but well enough explored scripts like [[ps:Cpmn|Cypro-Minoan]] and Indus may be eventually encoded.\n\n''Jindai'' was also rejected. Supposed pre-[[ps:Hani|Kanji]] script from Japan is considered a forgery of 17th century.

[Term.semantics]
Name=semantics
Text=Character’s behaviour is mainly specified with complex tables rather than with its name or position in code table. Excerpts from these tables are present in ''Unicodia'': [[pt:number|numeric]] value, case, writing [[pt:bidi|direction]]…

[Term.serialization]
Name=serialization
Text=Method of converting data (for example, Unicode text) to a chain of ''code units''{{-}}bytes for [[pt:utf8|UTF-8]], two-byte words for [[pt:utf16|UTF-16]], four-byte words for [[pt:utf32|UTF-32]], printable ASCII characters for [[pt:utf7|UTF-7]] and [[pt:punycode|Punycode]].\n\nDisks and data channels work with bytes. So when transmitting UTF-16/32, order of bytes in word begins to mean, and they split into UTF-16BE, UTF-32BE (big-endian, most significant byte first) and UTF-16LE, UTF-32LE (little-endian, least significant byte first).\n\n[[pt:bom|Byte order mark]] lets software distinguish between these formats.

[Term.space]
Name=whitespace

[Term.spacing]
Name=spacing character
Text=Character that occupies room in a line.\n\nSpacing are letters, [[pt:number|numbers]], punctuation marks, [[pt:space|whitespace]], miscellaneous symbols and spacing [[pt:combining|combining marks]].\n\nNon-spacing are [[pt:control|control characters]], [[pt:format|format characters]] and other types of marks.

[Term.stability]
Name=stability guarantees
Text=Unicode Consortium guarantees that it will{{_}}not{{_}}change some properties of characters.\n\n'''A character will{{_}}not{{_}}move or disappear''' (2.0+). Every new Unicode will be a superset of previous. Text is sorted using national sorting order.\n\n'''Character’s name will{{_}}not{{_}}change''' (2.0+). Though correction names exist, and '''they''' are shown by ''Unicodia''. Synonyms also won’t change, including corrections (5.0+).\n\n'''[[pt:normalization|Normalization]] of string will{{_}}not{{_}}change''' (4.1+). Version 3.1 had weaker guarantees: Unicode adopted more and more [[ps:Latn|Latin]] and other frequent scripts where normalization matters.\n\n'''Character’s properties may change, but not{{_}}so{{_}}much that its nature will change''' (1.1+). For example, capital letter will{{_}}not{{_}}turn to small, and [[pt:noncharacter|non-character]] will{{_}}not{{_}}return to use. In later versions of Unicode this rule was clarified.\n\n'''Normative and informational properties of character will{{_}}not{{_}}disappear from Unicode bases''' (5.2+). The rest may be renamed or removed, but will never take other’s place on rename.\n\n'''[[pt:casefolding|Case folding]] will{{_}}not{{_}}change''' (5.0+). Case folding is intended for locale-independent comparison of strings, and is generally (but not{{_}}necessarily) conversion into lowercase: in [[ps:Cher|Cherokee]] it is conversion to capitals, because they were introduced earlier.\n\n'''If two characters were (or were{{_}}not) in case pair, they will remain there''' (5.0+). Small letter may get capital counterpart (or vice-versa, like in Cherokee), and this is the only way for a letter to enter a case pair.

[Term.status]
Name=script status
Text='''Alive'''{{-}}at least one language has status “Safe”, the script is the only one or does{{_}}not{{_}}lose importance.\n\n'''Endengered due to language'''{{-}}all languages’ use and/or transfer is broken (status from “Vulnerable” to “Severely endangered”)\n\n'''Endangered due to script competition'''{{-}}all languages have alternate script, already stronger or gaining strength.\n\n'''Dead'''{{-}}script is no{{_}}longer in use, or its use is highly limited. Unicode knows only one script that died relatively recently due to language death{{-}}artificial language [[ps:Medf|Medefaidrin]].\n\n'''Religious'''{{-}}the script is in use by important religion.\n\n'''Historical, no{{_}}decipherment needed'''{{-}}because of continuous tradition ([[ps:Glag|Glagolitic]]), lifetime description ([[ps:Runr|runes]]) or proximity to other scripts ([[ps:Bhks|Bhaiksuki]]).\n\n'''(Un)deciphered'''{{-}}historical script is not{{_}}yet{{_}}deciphered (partly deciphered, deciphered).\n\n'''New'''{{-}}invented too recently to tell exactly about its status.\n\n'''Revived'''{{-}}returned to use after a period of silence. Revival may change its type and writing direction, like in [[ps:Tfng|Tifinagh]].\n\n'''Made for revival of dead language'''{{-}}[[ps:Osge|Osage]] only (writing in Latin proved bad).\n\n'''Experimental'''{{-}}failed attempt to make an orthographic reform. All examples present in Unicode fall into three categories: 1){{_}}English: complicated historical orthography; 2){{_}}Albanian: both secrecy from Turks and desire for cultural autonomy were present about 1800; 3){{_}}related to liberation of Africa in 20th century.

[Term.syllabic]
Name=syllabic script
Text=Script whose letter means a syllable made of consonant and vowel. Usually contain 80 to 120 letters. [[pt:abugida|Abugida]] is a type of syllabic script where similar syllables have similar letters.\n\nSyllabic script is easy to invent from [[pt:hiero|ideographic]]: people talk with syllables rather than phonemes, and it’s enough to write unknown word with appropriate one-syllable hieroglyphs. Such a process is recorded in [[ps:Xsux|cuneiform]] and [[ps:Hira|Japanese]].\n\nThere are several ways to write consonant conjuncts and lone consonants (let’s take word “stop” as an example):\n* Make a character for lone consonant: s-to-p ([[ps:Cans|Canadian syllabics]]).\n* Make this character by adding a diacritic ([[pt:virama|virama]]) to a syllable: sⱥ-to-pⱥ (many [[pt:brahmic|Brahmic]] abugidas, especially underdeveloped).\n* Some Brahmic abugidas ([[ps:Laoo|Lao]], [[ps:Tavt|Tai Viet]]) in 20th century reformed writing and got rid of virama. Main character started to mean a consonant.\n* Ban conjuncts and finals, adding vowels when borrowing: su-to-pu (Japanese). ''Japanese would have borrowed su-to-ppu, but that’s a question of phonetics.''\n* In some conditions that vowel actually becomes silent: sᵊ-to-pᵊ ([[ps:Guru|Gurmukhi]], partly Japanese).\n* Make [[pt:ligature|ligatures]]:  sᵀo-p? (major Brahmic abugidas like [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]]) or s?-toᴾ ([[ps:Limb|Limbu]]).\n* Drop final consonant: s?-to ([[ps:Linb|Mycenaean]], [[ps:Buhd|Buhid]]).

[Term.tofu]
Name=tofu
Text=[[pt:character|Glyph]] that is displayed when the character is missing from font. Usually tofu is a white box, hence name after Japanese soybean cheese cut in dice.\n\nSome fonts have creative tofu: rectangle with question mark, with cross or with sketchy mark of script.\n\nSome characters of Unicode are [[pt:ignorable|default-ignorable]]{{-}}not showing as tofu.\n\n''Noto'' set of fonts used in ''Unicodia'' as well as in other software means ''no{{_}}tofu''.

[Term.unification]
Name=unification
Text=Unification is writing different characters with the same [[pt:codepoint|code point]]. Duplication is writing a single character with different code points.\n\nUnicode avoids duplication. Punctuation marks are encoded once and are shared between all Western languages{{-}}and Eastern ones they penetrated to. Unicode does{{_}}not{{_}}distinguish letter Y in English (“wye”), French (“i grec”) and German (“ypsilon”). Moreover, similar [[ps:Hani|ideographs]] in Chinese and Japanese are also unified.\n\nThere are several important exceptions:\n* Completely different entities: letter A from [[ps:Latn|Latin]], [[ps:Grek|Greek]], [[ps:Cyrl|Cyrillic]] and [[ps:Cher|Cherokee]] is{{_}}not the{{_}}same character.\n* Ease of processing: simple and non-break hyphen exists. Unicode has as many as three letters Ð with different small counterparts.\n* Ease of fontmaking: every South-Asian language has its own virtual [[pt:virama|virama]] (special character for constructing consonant conjuncts). The designer should read the standard and understand what virama does.\n* Historical reasons{{-}}for [[pt:convertibility|round-trip convertibility]]: Chinese ideographs from old encodings are always Chinese and do{{_}}not{{_}}have Japanese counterparts.\n* Ordinary overlook may also take place: angle brackets ⟨ mathematical and 〈 technical, the latter is [[pt:deprecated|deprecated]].\n\nIf the characters were unified, but then Unicode started to distinguish them, it’s disunification. For example, in 2005 [[ps:Grek|Greek]] and [[ps:Copt|Coptic]] were disunified.

[Term.universality]
Name=universality
Text=Unicode is designed for people of different languages and professions: working in business, education, religion and science, for modern and historical texts.\n\nOutside the scope of Unicode are:\n* writing systems for which too little information is available to encode characters reliably;\n* scripts whose users did{{_}}not{{_}}make a ''de facto'' standard;\n* non-textual (for example, pictographic) scripts.

[Term.utf7]
Name=UTF-7
Text='''Unicode transformation format, 7 bit''' is a format of Unicode [[pt:serialization|serialization]] into a chain of printable [[pt:ascii|ASCII]] characters.\n\n52 letters, 10 digits and '(),-./:? are just written. Sometimes other ASCII characters except ~\\+ may be just written. Plus + may be encoded in +- (plus-hyphen). The rest characters are encoded to [[pt:utf16|UTF-16BE]], then into Base64 (62='''+''', 63='''/''') and enclosed with +…- characters (for example, <nobr>'''£1''' = +AKM-1</nobr>).\n\nIf the code is followed with any character except Base64 characters and hyphen, the final hyphen may be omitted. If there is a single unencodeable characters between two encodeable, it may be encoded too to save bytes.\n\nUTF-7 format does{{_}}not{{_}}have good properties of [[pt:utf8|UTF-8]] and even is ambiguous: the same text may be encoded in multiple ways.\n\nUsed only in E-mail as an alternative to more bulky ''quoted-printable''. In IMAP protocol special version of UTF-7 is used for mailbox names, where ampersand '''&''' is instead of plus '''+''', 63=comma, final hyphen is always written, and among ASCII characters only & is encoded. Such UTF-7 is unambiguous, that’s important for search. In World Wide Web UTF-7 is expressly forbidden: you can make an XSS attack if you trick the browser into thinking that the page is in UTF-7.

[Term.utf8]
Name=UTF-8
Text='''Unicode transformation format, 8 bit''' is a format of Unicode [[pt:serialization|serialization]] into a chain of bytes. Invented in 1992 in Plan{{_}}9 operating system for compatibility with existing Internet software. Every [[pt:codepoint|code point]] is written with one of these sequences:\n* 0xxx.xxxx\n* 110x.xxxx{{_}}10xx.xxxx\n* 1110.xxxx{{_}}10xx.xxxx{{_}}10xx.xxxx\n* 1111.0xxx{{_}}10xx.xxxx{{_}}10xx.xxxx{{_}}10xx.xxxx\n\nProperties of UTF-8:\n* Theoretically can write 2 billion code points with sequences up to 6 bytes. With limitations enforced to Unicode with [[pt:utf16|UTF-16]] there’s no sequences longer than 4.\n* Backwards compatibility: Latin text is indistinguishable from ASCII text. Bytes 00 and 7F are [[pt:control|control]], byte FF is impossible, that gives compatibility with program interfaces, terminal protocols.\n* Non-standard format of UTF-8 exists where null character is encoded as C0{{_}}80, distinguishing it from end of string 00.\n* Self-synchronizing: if you add any erroneous bytes, the rest text remains readable. Search in correct UTF-8 with legacy program also won’t make false positives.\n* Reliable detection: meaningful text in single-byte encoding (unless it is pure ASCII) or UTF-16 is impossible to confuse with UTF-8.\n* Monotonous: sorting by UTF-8 bytes is the same as sorting by character codes.\n\nUTF-8 is widely used as a format of inter-software exchange, including most Internet formats and protocols. [[pt:bom|Byte order mark]] is EF{{_}}BB{{_}}BF. As a format of program interface UTF-8 is used in Linux, cross-platform libraries like SSL.

[Term.utf16]
Name=UTF-16, surrogate pair
Text='''Unicode tranformation format, 16 bit''' is a format of Unicode [[pt:serialization|serialization]] into a chain of two-byte machine words.\n\nUnicode was initially thought as two-byte encoding, and writing of text with two-byte characters was named UCS-2. Progressive languages and libraries of those times like Java and Windows{{_}}NT quickly adopted two-byte character, that simplified text processing. But soon it became clear that two bytes are{{_}}not{{_}}enough, and in 1996 encoding with variable number of two-byte words was made as a compromise, and it was named UTF-16.\n* Characters 0…D7FF and E000…FFFF are just written;\n* Characters D800…DFFF are forbidden;\n* Characters 10000 and greater are written as '''surrogate pair''':\n: 1101.10yy.yyyy.yyyy{{_}}1101.11yy.yyyy.yyyy, where y=x−10000₁₆.\n\nProperties of UTF-16:\n* Imposes a limitation to Unicode capacity: 2<big>²⁰</big>+2<big>¹⁶</big>−2<big>¹¹</big>={{n|1112064}} characters.\n* Backwards compatibility: text of [[pt:bmp|Basic Plane]] is indistinguishable from UCS-2. If the working language lays in Basic Plane and characters of other planes are{{_}}not{{_}}processed (left intact or deleted), two-byte character is suitable for text processing.\n* Self-synchronizing: if you add any erroneous '''words''' (not bytes), the rest text remains readable. Search in UTF-16, even of one character, will{{_}}not{{_}}make false positives.\n* Unreliable detection: without [[pt:bom|byte order mark]] UTF-16 format and byte order are detectable only on indirect evidence{{-}}by statistics or surrogate pairs if they are present. Well-known [[pt:ascii|ASCII]] string “Bush hid the facts” breaks Windows’ statistical detection of UCS-2.\n* Non-monotonous: sorting by UTF-16 words is different from sorting by character codes.\n\nAs a format of inter-software exchange UTF-16 is mainly used in binary files originating from Windows and Mac/Motorola (for example, in TrueType fonts). These files do{{_}}not{{_}}need byte order mark; in text files it is FE{{_}}FF for UTF-16BE и FF{{_}}FE for UTF-16LE. As a format of program interface it’s used in Windows, Java, JavaScript, Qt.

[Term.utf32]
Name=UTF-32
Text='''Unicode transformation format, 32 bit''' aka '''UCS-4''' is a format of Unicode [[pt:serialization|serialization]] into a chain of four-byte machine words. Characters codes are just written one after another.\n\nProperties of UTF-32:\n* Constant-length encoding. That’s why it is the most suitable for compex text processing.\n* Extremely bulky: in [[pt:utf8|UTF-8]] and [[pt:utf16|UTF-16]] maximum character size is 4 bytes, and in UTF-32 all character are four-byte.\n* Detected reliably by eleven most significant bits, they are always zeros.\n\nAs a format of inter-software exchange UTF-32 is almost never used because of bulkiness. If you need{{-}}[[pt:bom|byte order mark]] is 00{{_}}00{{_}}FE{{_}}FF for UTF-32BE and FF{{_}}FE{{_}}00{{_}}00 for UTF-32LE. As a format of program interface UTF-32 is used in new versions of Unix-like OS, including MacOS.

[Term.virama]
Name=virama
Text=Virama (Sanskrit “stop”) is a sign in [[pt:brahmic|Brahmic]] abugidas meaning “erase inherent vowel”. For example, in [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]]: <nobr>ka {{sm|क}} + {{sm|्}} = k {{sm|क्}}</nobr>.\n\nIn reality in Indian languages its name is ''halant (Hindi “killer”), halanta, hošonto, chandrakkala ([[ps:Mlym|Malayalam]] “moon”).\n\nSome languages do{{_}}not{{_}}use virama often. For example:\n* [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] for consonant conjuncts{{-}}Devanagari {{sm|क्ष}} кša. They are written and encoded as if there’s no ligature, ka+virama+ša. To tear a ligature and input two letters and virama, one should type ka+virama+ZWNJ+ša;\n* sings for final consonant{{-}}[[ps:Cham|Cham]], [[ps:Limb|Limbu]];\n* inherent vowel reduced to nothing{{-}}[[ps:Guru|Punjabi]]. Many languages of India, including Hindi, omit virama in the end of words;\n* spelling reform dropped inherent vowel{{-}}[[ps:Laoo|Lao]];\n* virama may be a single entity with letter{{-}}[[ps:Talu|New Tai Lue]];\n* unable to write “extra” consonants{{-}}[[ps:Bugi|Buginese]].\n\nMost viramas are [[pt:combining|combining marks]]. But some are [[pt:spacing|spacing]] ([[ps:Java|Javanese]]).\n\nSome scripts ([[ps:Khar|Kharoshthi]], [[ps:Mtei|Meitei Mayek]]) feature “virtual virama” for assembling ligatures. Sometimes even ([[ps:Sund|Sundanese]], [[ps:Cakm|Chakma]]) together with visible virama. Virtual virama looks like a cross, but leaving it visible in ordinary text is a mistake.

[Term.winemoji]
Name=Windows 10/11 emoji panel
Text=In Windows{{_}}10/11 press {{kb|Win|;}} or {{kb|Win|.}} to open emoji panel. Can enter:\n* [[pt:emoji|emoji]] existing in standard font. When the font extended, panel extended too;\n* text smilies;\n* typography characters;\n* Latin with diacritics;\n* currency symbols;\n* [[ps:Grek|Greek]];\n* arrows;\n* superscripts, fractions, mathematical operators.

[Term.zwj]
Name=ZWJ = zero width joiner
Text=[[pt:format|Format]] character U+200D intended to combine characters into a [[pt:ligature|ligature]]. It’s [[pt:ignorable|default-ignorable]], i.e. it’s perfectly safe to skip it silently.\n\n'''[[pt:brahmic|Indic]] scripts''', e.g. [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]]:\n{{smtable|*क|ka +|**◌्|[[pt:virama|virama]] +|*ष|ša =|*क्ष|kša}}\n{{smtable|*क|ka +|**◌्|virama + ZWJ +|*ष|ša =|*क्‍ष|alternate kša}}\n\n'''[[pt:emoji|Emoji]]'''\n: {{em|👩}} woman + ZWJ + {{em|✈️}} airplane+VS16 = {{em|👩‍✈️}} woman pilot\n\nAlso colours, genders, movement directions and others. This method opened another way of building emoji sequences: vendor invents a sequence without anyone’s permission, and if it proves successful, Consortium encodes it.\n\n'''Do not''' use ZWJ: skin tones, keycaps, national and regional flags

[Term.zwnj]
Name=ZWNJ = zero width non-joiner
Text=[[pt:format|Format]] character U+200C intended to break a [[pt:ligature|ligature]]. It’s [[pt:ignorable|default-ignorable]], i.e. it does{{_}}not{{_}}have to be in the font.\n\n'''[[ps:Latn|Latin]]'''\n: In some fonts '''stop''' → '''ﬆop'''\n: '''dys''' + ZWNJ + '''topia''' = '''dys&zwnj;topia''' (no ligature between prefix and root)\n\n'''[[pt:brahmic|Indic]] scripts''', e.g. [[ps:Deva|Devanagari]]\n{{smtable|*क|ka +|**◌्|[[pt:virama|virama]] +|**ष|ša =|*क्ष|kša}}\n{{smtable|*क|ka +|**◌्|virama + ZWNJ +|*ष|ša =|*क्‌ष|alternate kša}}\n::: (usually in compound words)

[TermCat]
Encoding=Encoding
Serialization=Serialization
Scripts=Types of scripts
Chars=Types of characters
Algos=Unicode algorithms
General=General principles of Unicode
Styles=Writing styles
Input=Input
Misc=Miscellaneous
Vers=Versions
Ev=e{1}

[GlyphVar.Glag]
0=Bulgaria
1=Croatia
Name=Style of Glagolitic
Text=[[ps:Glag|Glagolitic]] has two styles, Bulgarian (round) and Croatian (square). Both are [[pt:unification|unified]].

[GlyphVar.Vert]
0=Horizontal
1=Vertical
Name=Direction of vertical scripts
Text=Scholars routinely change the direction of historical scripts to simplify their work. But for some vertical scripts, this is impossible, so the text is just turned.\n\n[[ps:Sogd|Sogdian]] and derivatives ([[ps:Ougr|Uyghur]], [[ps:Mong|Mongolian]], [[ps:Phag|Phags-Pa]]): joined letters.\n\n[[ps:Tayo|Tai Yo]]: complex [[pt:combining|marks]].

[GlyphVar.Arab]
0=Isolated
1=Initial
2=Medial
3=Final
Name=Position of Arabic letters
Text=Arabic letters are written in a continuous line, so they can be isolated, initial, medial and final.

[Search]
NonChar=Non-character
Private=Private-use character
Surrogate=Code from surrogate pair
Unassigned=Unassigned code
Vacant=Vacant position: {1}
NotFound=Not found
BadCode=Cannot parse character code
BigCode=Characher code is too great
NoSuch=No such character
NEmoji={1} emoji

[Search.Blk]
New={1}, new block
Full={1}, block is full
NewFull={1}, new block is full
Ext={1}, block is extended
NewSc={1}, new script
NewScFull={1}, new script, full
NewDis={1}, disunified script

[Search.Num]
Digit=digit
SpecDigit=special digit
Number=number
CjkRare=rarely
CjkAccount=anti-forgery
CjkZhuang=Zhuang
CjkVietnamese=Vietnamese

[Expand.0]
Label=CJK (except Kana) and Egyptian hieroglyphs are collapsed.
Button=Expand

[Expand.1]
Label=CJK and Egyptian hieroglyphs are expanded.
Button=Collapse

[About]
TofuStats=Tofu statistics
Version=Version <b>{1}</b> ({2})
MyName=Mikhail Merkuryev
HomePage=Home page
NoUnicode=This program is not related to Unicode Consortium
FontDevs=Font designers, alphabetically
NonComm=(CC&nbsp;BY-NC-SA, talk to them about commercial distribution!)
License=Licensed under <a href='https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.ru.html'>GPL 3.0</a>
And=and
Etc=and others
Thanks=Special thanks
TempEgyp=for backup Egyptian font and hieroglyph base
TempKawi=for temporary Kawi font
QaEgyp=for reviewing Egyptian font
OldMaka=for old Makasar font
ToJa=for translation to Japanese

[Main]
Sort=Order blocks by
Search=Search
Favs=Favourites ({1})
NoFavs=Your Favourites list is empty. Add some characters [[gi:blinkaddcp|in Blocks tab]].

[Main.Ui]
:windowTitle=Unicodia — encyclopedia of characters
tabBlocks:at=Blocks
btCloseSearch=Close
tabLibrary:at=Library
tabTerms:at=Terms
tabAbout:at=About
lbAboutTitle=Unicodia
lbAboutSubtitle=Encyclopedia of Unicode characters
btCheckForUpdate=Check for update
lbChecking=Checking…

[Main.Ui.actions]
acSortByAlpha=Alphabetically: A → Z
acSortByCode=By code: 00 → FF
acSortByContinent=By continent: international → America
acSortByTech=By technical name: A → Z
acAddCpToFavs=Add to favourites
acRemoveFromFavs=Remove from favourites

[Main.Local]
Copy=Copy
CopyVs15=Copy + VS15 (text)
CopyVs16=Copy + VS16 (graphic)
CopyDotc=Copy + dotted circle
CopyBare=Copy primary symbol
Remove=Remove
FindBlk=Find in Blocks
FindLib=Find in Library

[Showcase.Ui]
btCopy=Copy
lbStyleSet=Style

[Sample]
Sample=Sample
ToLib=To Library

[Lib]
Favs=Favourites work with single characters only

[Lib.Group]
Strange=Strange CJK ideographs
A=A: asymmetric
B=B: Bopomofo-like
C=C: cursive
F=F: fully-reflective
H=H: contain Hangul
I=I: incomplete look
K=K: Katakana-like
M=M: mirrored
O=O: odd component
R=R: rotated
S=S: stroke-heavy
U=U: unusual structure
Emoji=Emoji
Smileys & Emotion=Smileys and emotions
face-smiling=Face / smiling
face-affection=Face / affection
face-tongue=Face / tongue
face-hand=Face / hand
face-neutral-skeptical=Face / neutral and skeptical
face-sleepy=Face / sleepy
face-unwell=Face / unwell
face-hat=Face / hat
face-glasses=Face / glasses
face-concerned=Face / concerned
face-negative=Face / negative
face-costume=Masks
cat-face=Cats
monkey-face=Monkeys
heart=Hearts
emotion=Emotion symbols
People & Body=People and body
hand-fingers-open=Hand / open
hand-fingers-partial=Hand / partly open
hand-single-finger=Hand / single finger
hand-fingers-closed=Hand / closed
hands=Both hands
hand-prop=Hand with props
body-parts=Body parts
person=Person
person-gesture=Person / gesture
person-role=Person / professions and roles
person-fantasy=Person / fantasy
person-activity=Person / activity
person-sport=Person / sport
person-resting=Person / resting
family=Family
person-symbol=Person / silhouettes
Component=Components
skin-tone=Skin tone
hair-style=Hair style
Animals & Nature=Animals and nature
animal-mammal=Mammals
animal-bird=Birds
animal-amphibian=Amphibians
animal-reptile=Reptiles
animal-marine=Marine animals
animal-bug=Bugs
plant-flower=Flowers
plant-other=Other plants
Food & Drink=Food and drinks
food-fruit=Fruit
food-vegetable=Vegetable
food-prepared=Prepared food
food-asian=Asian food
food-sweet=Sweets
drink=Drinks
dishware=Dishware
Travel & Places=Travel and places
place-map=Place / maps
place-geographic=Place / geographic zones
place-building=Place / buildings
place-religious=Place / religious
place-other=Place / other
transport-ground=Transport / ground
transport-water=Transport / water
transport-air=Transport / air
hotel=Hotel
time=Time
sky & weather=Sky and weather
Activities=Activities
event=Holidays and events
award-medal=Awards
sport=Sport
game=Games
arts & crafts=Arts and crafts
Objects=Objects
clothing=Clothing and accessories
sound=Sound
music=Music
musical-instrument=Musical instruments
phone=Phone
computer=Computer
light & video=Lights, photo and video
book-paper=Books and papers
money=Money
mail=Mail
writing=Writing appliances
office=Office
lock=Locks and keys
tool=Tools and weapons
science=Science instruments
medical=Medical
household=Household
other-object=Other objects
Symbols=Symbols
transport-sign=Pedestrian navigation
warning=Warning signs
arrow=Arrows
religion=Religion
zodiac=Zodiac
av-symbol=Audio-video
gender=Gender
math=Mathematical
punctuation=Punctuation
currency=Currency
other-symbol=Other symbols
keycap=Keycaps
alphanum=Alphanumeric
geometric=Geometric figures
Flags=Flags
flag=Misc. flags
country-flag=Country flags
subdivision-flag=Subdivision flags
Numbers=Numbers
Vulgar fractions=Vulgar fractions
Superscripts=Superscripts
Subscripts=Subscripts
Circled numbers=Circled numbers
Circled dingbat-numbers=Circled dingbat-numbers
Double circled numbers=Double circled numbers
Negative circled numbers=Negative circled numbers
Negative circled dingbat-numbers=Negative circled dingbat-numbers
Parenthesized dingbat-numbers=Parenthesized dingbat-numbers
Dingbat-numbers with full stop=Dingbat-numbers with full stop
CjkFull=CJK fullwidth
7seg=Seven-segment
EmKeycap=Emoji keycaps
ConOut=Console outlined
Business=Business characters
Currencies=Currency symbols
IntelProperty=Intellectual property
Science=Science and technology
Astro=Astronomy (and astrology)
SolMain=Sol / main
SolAster=Sol / asteroid belt
SolCent=Sol / centaurs
SolPlut=Sol / plutoids
AstroQuasi=Astrological quasi-planets
Celestial=Celestial mechanics
AstroAspect=Astrological aspects
AstroMisc=Astrological miscellaneous
BabZodc=Babylonian zodiac
ChinZodc=Chinese zodiac
TechDraw=Technical drawing
Electro=Electricity
Math=Mathematics
Equality=Equality
Inequality=Inequality
GreaterLess=Greater-less
GreaterLessBidi=Greater and less
SetTheory=Set theory
MultiStorey=Multi-storey equations
Plus=Plus
Minus=Minus
Mul=Multiplication
Div=Division
CmpMisc=Misc. inequality characters
Boolean=Boolean algebra
Braces=Braces
Latin=Latin / by letter
OldForms=Old forms
MiscForms=Misc. forms
Latin2=Latin / by language
EnTran=English transcription
NotRec=Not recommended
TwoDiac=Two diacritical marks
DoubleStruck=Double-struck
SansSerif=Sans-serif
SsBold=Sans-serif bold
Monospace=Monospace
Bold=Bold
Latin3=Latin / by font
ParenCap=Parenthesized / capital
ParenSmall=Parenthesized / small
CircCap=Circled / capital
CircSmall=Circled / small
NegCircCap=Negative circled / capital
SquareCap=Squared / capital
NegSquareCap=Negative squared / capital
BoldCap=Bold / capital
BoldSmall=Bold / small
ItalCap=Italic / capital
ItalSmall=Italic / small
BiCap=Bold+italic / capital
BiSmall=Bold+italic / small
ScrCap=Script / capital
ScrSmall=Script / small
ScrBoldCap=Script bold / capital
ScrBoldSmall=Script bold / small
DoubleCap=Double-struck / capital
DoubleSmall=Double-struck / small
DoubleMisc=Double-struck / misc
FrakCap=Fraktur / capital
FrakSmall=Fraktur / small
FrakBoldCap=Fraktur bold / capital
FrakBoldSmall=Fraktur bold / small
SansCap=Sans-serif / capital
SansSmall=Sans-serif / small
SansBoldCap=Sans-serif bold / capital
SansBoldSmall=Sans-serif bold / small
SansItalCap=Sans-serif italic / capital
SansItalSmall=Sans-serif italic / small
SansBiCap=Sans-serif bold+italic / capital
SansBiSmall=Sans-serif bold+italic / small
SmallCap=Small capitals
MonoCap=Monospace / capital
MonoSmall=Monospace / small
CjkCap=CJK fullwidth / capital
CjkSmall=CJK fullwidth / small
CjkSimIdeo=CJK similar ideographs
CherCap=Cherokee / capital
CherSmall=Cherokee / small
Bamu=Bamum
Vaii=Vai
Cans=Canadian syllabics
MiscLat=Latin letter of different origin
Clicks=Clicks
SuperCap=Superscript / capital
SuperSmall=Superscript / small
InvCap=Turned-over / capital
InvSmall=Turned-over / small
RevCap=Reversed / capital
RevSmall=Reversed / small
Game=Games
GameConsole=Game consoles
ConsoleMisc=Misc. characters
Chess=Chess
ChPieses=Standard pieces
ChFairy=Fairy pieces
ChNeutral=Neutral pieces
ChInvert=Inverted pieces
ChComment=Comments
Checkers=Checkers/draughts
Cyrl1=Cyrillic / by letter
CyrlGrek=Transliteration of Greek
CyrlMisc=Other origin
Regional=Country letters
OnOff=On/off
SimLatn=Similar Latin

[Lib.Text]
SmallCap=Small-capital type is used in phonetics, so Unicode has small-capital style for all basic Latin except X.

[Lib.Misr]
Head={{{{warn|Other images are possible!}} {1}
U+1F1E6+1F1EB=The current (2024) government, the Taliban, is recognized almost nowhere. Their flag is white with black shahada, the Muslim motto. Meanwhile, vendors use the old flag abandoned in 2021.
U+1F1E6+1F1F6=As of 2024, all vendors use the flag created in 1996 for ''3D World Atlas'' multimedia encyclopedia: UN blue with white continent. A competing flag, navy blue and white with a diamond, has existed since 2018.
U+1F1F2+1F1F6=The red-green-black flag was adopted in 2023. Before that, all vendors used blue French naval ensign with white snakes.
U+1F1ED+1F1F3=In 2022 Honduras made the flag light blue instead of blue.
U+1F1F8+1F1FE=The Assads’ flag was red-white-black with two stars. The government fled in December 2024, and the flag was changed to green-white-black with three stars (older pre-Assad, but with different aspect ratio).
U+1F46A=Vendors drew it as man, woman and child until 2019. Later it became genderless. In 2023 it turned to silhouette.
U+1F52B=In 2018 the image was changed to a toy to curb threats over the Internet. Despite the consensus, Twitter/X reverted to live gun in 2024.
U+1F68F=Vendors may draw a variety of local bus stops.
U+1F6DE=Vendors may draw a wheel from horse carriage, bicycle or automobile.
U+1FA85=Google Noto draws star-shaped piñata, and Microsoft does animal-shaped.
U+1FA92=All vendors settled on safety razor relatively recently, in 2019–2021. Windows{{_}}10 emoji depicts a straight razor.
U+1F9A0=All microscopic creatures are possible: amoeba, bacteria, COVID-19 or other virus.
U+1FAA4=As of 2023, the sample Unicode image depicts a spring-loaded trap. But as this emoji mostly means “free cheese” and “entrapment”, most vendors draw a makeshift trap intended to catch the mouse alive, with cheese inside.
Family=Unicode Consortium in early 2023 demanded to draw genderless families as silhouettes (e.g. family film) and move them on “keyboards” from People to Symbols, and recommended to remove gendered ones from “keyboards” and fill with the same silhouettes, to prevent combinatorial explosion. And families often include grandparents and pets. In autumn 2023 Google released their emoji with silhouettes, in spring 2024 Apple did the same. Google’s silhouettes have a little twist: they show women’s haircuts.
IO=In 2024, Britain withdrew claims to the uninhabited Chagos Archipelago, giving it to Mauritius but leasing the entire Diego Garcia island, a joint British-US military base. The flag of the British Indian Ocean Territory will likely stay for history, and the flag of Diego Garcia may change.

[Lib.Cinfo]
Info=Country info
Sta=Status
Loc=Location
Pop=Population

[Lib.Sta]
Rec=Recognized state
NoMan=Uninhabited land, no one’s by international treaty
Union=Supranational union
Org=International organization
AuExt=External territory of Australia
GbOv=Overseas territory of Great Britain
GbOv!=Disputed; de facto overseas territory of Great Britain
GbOvF=Former overseas territory of Great Britain
GbDep=Dependent territory of Great Britain
CnSpec=Special region of China
DkAuto=Autonomous region of Denmark
FiSpec=Special territory of Finland
FrOv=Overseas territory of France
FrUn=Uninhabited land controlled by France
NlDep=Territory of Netherlands
NlOv=Overseas territory of Netherlands
NzAssoc=Associated territory of New Zealand
NoUn=Uninhabited land controlled by Norway
NoDep=Dependent territory of Norway
EsAuto=Autonomous region of Spain
UsDep=Dependent territory of the USA
PartEh=Partly recognized state, controls part of claimed territory, dispute with Morocco
PartPs=Partly recognized state, controls part of claimed territory, dispute with Israel
PartTw=Partly recognized state, controls part of claimed territory, dispute with China
PartXk=Partly recognized state, controls part of claimed territory, dispute with Serbia
MuGb=Leased from Mauritius by Great Britain

[Lib.Loc]
Eu=Europe
As=Asia
Af=Africa
Na=North America
Sa=South America
Au=Australia
Sp=South Pole
EuAs=Europe and Asia
Oa=Atlantic Ocean
OaEu=Atlantic Ocean, near Europe
OaGb=Atlantic Ocean, British Islands
OaAf=Atlantic Ocean, near Africa
OaNa=Atlantic Ocean, near North America
OaSa=Atlantic Ocean, near South America
OaCs=Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea
OaAq=Atlantic Ocean, Antarctic region
OaEc=English Channel
OaBs=Baltic Sea
OaMs=Mediterranean Sea
OpPo=Pacific Ocean, Polynesia
OpMi=Pacific Ocean, Micronesia
OpAs=Pacific Ocean, near Asia
OpAu=Pacific Ocean, near Australia
OpNa=Pacific Ocean, near North America
Ma=Malay Archipelago
AsMa=Asia and Malay Archipelago
Oi=Indian Ocean
OiAf=Indian Ocean, near Africa
OiAs=Indian Ocean, near Asia
OiAq=Indian Ocean, Antarctic region
OiGp=Gulf of Persia
On=Arctic Ocean
NyHq=New York (headquarters)

[Lib.Pop]
Dfl=Permanent
Set=Settlers of recent centuries (no indigenous people)
SetSv=Settlers of recent centuries, Svalbard only
Mil=Mainly military
Sci=Mainly scientists
Nom=Settlers of late 20th century and military personnel (Moroccan part), mainly nomads (independent part)
Pri=Mainly clergy
Uni=Uninhabited
Nat=Nature reserve
GS=Abandoned with decline of whaling, mainly scientists and tourists

[Version.Bullet]
NewChar=New characters
NewCjk=[[ps:Hani|CJK ideographs]]
NewNew=from new scripts
NewEx=from existing scripts
NewFmt=[[pt:format|format]] characters without script
NewSym=misc. symbols
Transient=Characters that would be deleted later
TotalChar=Total characters, incl. [[pt:control|control]]
NewEm=New emoji
NewEm1=Single-character and VS16
NewEm1a=Single-character
NewEm1This=from this Unicode
NewEm1Prev=from previous versions
NewEm1Skin=Skintone sequences
NewEmZwj=[[pt:zwj|ZWJ]] sequences
NewZwjMulti=multiracial
NewZwjRight=right-facing
NewZwjColor=of colour
NewZwjGender=of gender
NewZwjFam=couples and families
NewZwjActivity=of activity
NewZwjApp=of appearance
NewZwjOther=other
NewEmNot=Non-[[pt:zwj|ZWJ]] sequences
NewNotSkin=character+skintone
NewNotFlag=national flags
NewNotSubdiv=subdivision flags
NewNotKey=keycaps
TotalEm=Total emoji
NewSc=New scripts
TotalSc=Total scripts
Plus={1} + {2} skintone

[Version.1.1]
Text=The first version that became ISO standard, and the first existing in Unicode bases. Bases of 1.0 and 1.0.1 are reconstructed.\n\nVersion 1.0 (October 1991, ≈{{n|7200}} characters) added most scripts of 1.1, including [[ps:Tibt|Tibetan]] deleted in 1.1, and {{n|2350}} [[ps:Hang|Hangul]] syllables that would be deleted in [[pv:2.0|2.0]].\n\nVersion 1.0.1 (June 1992, ≈{{n|28300}} characters) added {{n|20902}} [[ps:Hani|CJK ideographs]], and deleted 6 characters.\n\nVersion 1.1 added {{n|4306}} more Hangul characters, and deleted Tibetan.

[Version.2.0]
Text=Version 2.0 moved [[pt:precomposed|precomposed]] [[ps:Hang|Hangul]] syllables to their current place. After a great outcry Unicode adopted main [[pt:stability|stability]] guarantee: the character will not move or disappear.

[Version.2.1]
Text=Added euro '''€''' and object replacement character FFFC.

[Version.3.1]
Text=The first use of [[pt:plane|planes]] 1 and 2. [[pt:utf16|UTF-16]] and sixteen supplementary planes were proposed five years before.

[Version.6.2]
Text=Added Turkish lira sign 20BA presented in March 2012.

[Version.6.3]
Text=Five [[pt:format|format]] characters for [[pt:bidi|bidirectional]] text.

[Version.12.1]
Text=Emergency release of Unicode containing one character 32FF, Reiwa era of Japanese traditional calendar. When in 2016 old Emperor Akihito decided to abdicate, a new code point was reserved for his heir. When he finally abdicated on 30 April 2019, the character was quickly encoded.

[Version.15.1]
Text=Unicode Consortium experienced staff problems, release manager had gone and Sinologist died. So they decided to make a minor release: five ideographic description characters, 18 right-facing emoji, and 10 emoji sequences including lime, phoenix, and silhouettes of families.\n\nChinese government also forced to do an urgent job, see [[pk:2EBF0|CJK ideographs extension I]].\n\nA very big release 16.0 is expected in 2024.

[Version.16.0]
Text=Besides character additions, there were many internal changes in Unicode.\n* Rewrote algorithms of rendering Arabic text.\n* Wrote character sequences that should not exist in Unicode text.\n* Added base of Egyptian hieroglyphs.\n* Turned PDF specification to HTML site.\n\nUnicode{{_}}16 might have exactly {{n|155000}} characters (excluding 65 [[pt:control|control]]){{-}}but two Indic [[pt:ligature|ligatures]] were removed.

[Version.17.0]
Text=* Written [[pt:egyp|rules]] of encoding Egyptian hieroglyphs\n* Reformed [[ps:Adlm|Adlam]] script for better legibility\n* Added a [[pt:inclusion|genderless]] version of the last emoji{{-}}dancer: Latin for a woman, disco for a man, and ballet for genderless\n* Added the last multiracial emoji{{-}}wrestlers and Playboy girls

[Update]
Head=Check for update
Ok=You are using the latest version {1}.
Earlier=Strange: my version is {1}, the repository has {2}. Probably the repository has migrated, or you have a non-public development version.
Later=My version is {1}, found update to {2}. Go to repository?
BadVer=Strange: cannot parse version “{1}”.
Connect=Cannot connect to repository. Check your internet connection.
Err=Strange: got error code {1}. Something happened to repository.
Go=&Go
Close=&Close
Parse=Strange: cannot parse server’s reply.
Abandon=Your platform “{1}” seems to be abandoned. You’ll have to go to home page for yourself and find a suitable platform.

[OldComp.PropName]
Memory=Memory
Sales=Sales
Year=Year
Type=Type
Country=Country
Chars=Characters
Graphics=Graphics
Cpu=CPU: {1}-bit ''(by data bus)''
Color=Colour
Unenc=Unencoded
Supp=Supported in Unicode

[OldComp.Prop.Country]
DD=East Germany
EU=Europe
FR=France
GB=United Kingdom
JP=Japan
SU=Soviet Union
US=United States
USHK=United States / Hong Kong

[OldComp.Prop.Graphics]
No=text only
Lim=limited
Later=in later models
Yes=yes

[OldComp.Prop.Type]
Home=home/educational PC ''(keyboard form factor, BASIC in ROM, supports TV and tape recorder)''
Desk=early hobby PC with monitor
Adv=advanced PC ''(monitor, disks, OS)''
Term=terminal
TermSvc=terminal service
Info=information service
Prog=programming language

[OldComp.Prop.Sales]
10k=over 10k
30k=over 30k
100k=over 100k
300k=over 300k
1M=over 1M
3M=over 3M
10M=over 10M

[OldComp.Prop.Chars]
Typ=typographic
Arr=arrows
Mat=mathematical
Alp=alternate Latin alphabet
Dig=alternate set of digits
Lin=lines
Blk=blocks
Sha=shapes
Con=control pictures
Gam=game sprites
Mul=multi-cell graphics
Eng=engineering graphics
Img=misc. images
UI=user interface

[OldComp.Prop.Mem]
1={1} kbytes
2={1}–{2} kbytes

[OldComp.Prop.Color]
Bw=black and white
Dis=black-and-white models are more common
Yes=yes
Later=in later models

[OldComp.AmstradCpc]
Text=Designed to be as luxurious as possible for a home computer, it was the second British home computer after ZX Spectrum. It was not plugged into a TV, instead it came with a monitor.

[OldComp.Apple2]
Text=Despite the advent of Macintosh (1984), modest Apple{{_}}II generated most of company’s income. It came with a monitor (probably because of short-lived regulations{{-}}consoles made lots of interference to nearby TV sets), but the monitor was connected using composite wire, like TV (composite input was rare those years).
Unenc=Apple logo

[OldComp.Aquarius]
Text=The computer was obsolete from the beginning, and was produced for a few months only.

[OldComp.Atari400]
Text=TV consoles made lots of interference to nearby TV sets, and that led to new regulations on radio frequency hardware (later they were weakened). To make a computer pluggable to TV’s aerial socket, Atari ended up with cast aluminum case and a ROM cartridge inside. Computer’s video architecture resembled console (scrolling text and hardware sprites), and was praised for ease of programming.

[OldComp.AtariSt]
Text=Atari did not survive the 1983 video game crisis and was sold to Jack Tramiel, former founder of Commodore. They made the second advanced home computer after Commodore Amiga. It was praised by musicians, and music editors ''Cubase'' and ''Logic Pro'' originated from ST.
Unenc=Atari logo, 2×2 portrait

[OldComp.BbcMaster]
Text=Was created by Acorn Computers as the second educational computer (after BBC Micro). It had a nice graphical OS, but it was a strange computer that aimed at several niches and hit none. Low price and TV support led to 8-bit processor and non-square pixel, and the scientific model was cancelled because of low memory.\n\nA later model had a second Intel CPU, but IBM compatibility was basic{{-}}though it could run several important programs like ''Turbo{{_}}C'', and with memory expansion module even ''WordPerfect''.

[OldComp.C64]
Text=Commodore 64, the main American home computer, took encoding from earlier Commodore PET. It put formula of home computers “many colours, low resolution” to the limit: the main mode for games was 160×200, 16 colours total, 4 colours per 4×8 cell. For comparison: IBM CGA had 320×200, 4 colours without clash cells. Those 16 colours were very drab, that made games more realistic.

[OldComp.CoCo]
Text=Completely incompatible with old TRS-80, it was a low-cost home computer.

[OldComp.Hp]
Name=HP terminals
Text=Rather rare and not so famous as DEC terminals.

[OldComp.Ibm]
Text=The computer became ''de facto'' standard in late 1980s: it had been cloned in 1982, and new models became more and more powerful, retaining compatibility with old software. Games were poor initially, but VGA (320×200, 256 colours, 1987) and sheer CPU power made possible rather nice games{{-}}and, more important, diverse, not restricted with low memory or capabilities of graphic accelerator.\n\nAnother IBM’s strengths were excellent text quality (80×25 cells 9×16 each in later adapters) and ease of localization (done completely in software).\n\nFor many years it ran obsolete DOS, until Microsoft presented Windows{{_}}95. Earlier OS like Unix or Windows{{_}}NT were rare.\n\nMost modern general-purpose computers are descendants of IBM compatibles (DOS compatibility was finally broken in 2010s). Only portable and special-purpose systems use other architectures.
SalesNote=(IBM only, ≈60M with clones by 1989)
MemNote=(until 1990)

[OldComp.Kaypro]
Text=The company found an interesting niche: they made very advanced 8-bit computers. In 1984 they switched to IBM compatibles, but the time had gone, and by 1990 they filed bankruptcy.

[OldComp.Korvet]
Name=Korvet
Text=The computer was interesting and had good graphics, but production quality was poor, and 8-bit CPU was too weak for it, there were few scrolling games. After the fall of the USSR, cases made for Korvet were reused for smaller computers.\n\nIn one of the smoothest Korvet games, ''Rally'', only cars were graphical, the road was made with [[pt:pseudographics|pseudographics]].

[OldComp.Mac]
Text=Mac had mouse and excellent OS, and its encoding was not encumbered with [[pt:pseudographics|pseudographics]], so it was praised by typesetters. Most design software, including ''Adobe Photoshop'', came from Mac. But the first colour Mac came only in 1987. The same Mac became 32-bit.\n\nSystem fonts had UI symbols in non-standard positions, author of ''Unicodia'' attempted to find them all.
SalesNote=(until 1990)
Unenc=Apple logo
MemNote=(classic Motorola 68000, until 1994)

[OldComp.Minitel]
Text=Terminals were installed for free, the fee was collected for minutes of usage (equivalent of 30€¢ per minute). The system provided messaging, dating, phone directory, games, ticket booking, and more. France even had a small “dotcom bubble”, long before American in 2000! The system was closed only in 2012.

[OldComp.Msx]
Text=Japanese open standard of home computers, made by Sony, Philips and others. Well-known games ''Bomberman'' and ''Metal Gear'' were initially made for these computers. USSR attempted to use them as educational computers, dubbed KUVT Yamaha.

[OldComp.Ohio]
Text=The compaby sold early hobbyist computers, and was acquired in 1980 by telecommunication company M/A-COM that experienced financial troubles themselves.

[OldComp.Oric]
Text=Not a successful computer, it was cloned in Yugoslavia (Nova 64) and Bulgaria (Pravetz 8D).

[OldComp.RiscOs]
Text=Acorn Archimedes, RISC PC and others were in limited use by professionals (television, musicians) until IBM compatibles running Windows{{_}}NT and Unix drove them out.

[OldComp.Robotron]
Text=Almost never sold to customers, it was used as an educational computer.

[OldComp.Smalltalk]
Text=Early editions of language had their own special characters.

[OldComp.Spectrum]
Text=ZX Spectrum was the main British home PC: it was cheap (&lt;200 pounds), and had diverse games. It had no graphic acceleration, and all games except the simplest were really slow.\n\nThe most interesting story started in late 80s: DIYers from Eastern Bloc reconstructed the graphic chip out of discrete logic gates, and Spectrum clones became the main computers of the xUSSR for a brief time, until Windows and increased income made [[po:Ibm|IBM compatibles]] more widespread.
MemNote=(early 16K version was rare, and conversion kit to 48K existed)
SalesNote=(Sinclair’s original)

[OldComp.SharpMz]
Text=It had no programming languages in ROM, and thus boasted several languages developed by competing companies. But the user had to load them from cassette or disk.
Unenc=Pac-Man

[OldComp.Teletext]
Name=teletext
YearNote=(first TV sets)
Text=Teletext transmits text and [[pt:pseudographics|pseudographics]] in blanking fields of TV signal. Nowadays most channels transmit only subtitles.

[OldComp.Trs80]
Text=The computer was sold in RadioShack, Tandy’s chain of electronic stores. It had lots of innate problems, from radio interferences to poorly working cassette interface. Later models had diskettes.

[OldComp.Zx80]
Text=Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81 were the cheapest working computers. Version with 2 kilobytes was sold for 70 pounds.
