Script (Unicode): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 14:30, 22 December 2021

Revision as of 13:42, 13 January 2022

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{{ISO 15924/unicode-script-illustration}}

In [[Unicode]], a '''script''' is a collection of [[Letter (alphabet)|letter]]s and other written signs used to represent textual information in one or more [[writing system]]s.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://unicode.org/glossary/|title=Glossary|website=unicode.org}}</ref> Some scripts support one and only one writing system and [[Written language|language]], for example, [[Armenian language|Armenian]]. Other scripts support many different writing systems; for example, the [[Latin script in Unicode|Latin script]] supports [[English alphabet|English]], [[French alphabet|French]], [[German alphabet|German]], [[Italian alphabet|Italian]], [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]], [[Latin alphabet|Latin]] itself, and several other languages. Some languages make use of multiple alternate writing systems, and thus also use several scripts; for example, in [[Turkish language|Turkish]], the [[Ottoman Turkish alphabet|Arabic]] script was used before the 20th century, but transitioned to Latin in the early part of the 20th century. For a list of languages supported by each script, see the [[list of languages by writing system]]. More or less complementary to scripts are [[Unicode symbols|symbols]] and Unicode [[control character]]s.

The unified [[Combining Diacritical Marks for Symbols|diacritical character]]s and unified [[General Punctuation|punctuation characters]] frequently have the "common" or "inherited" script property. However, the individual scripts often have their own [[punctuation]] and [[diacritic]]s, so that many scripts include not only letters, but also diacritic and other marks, punctuation, numerals and even their own idiosyncratic symbols and [[Space (punctuation)|space]] characters.

Unicode 14.0 defines 159 separate scripts, including 93 modern scripts and 66 ancient or historic scripts.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/Scripts.txt|title=Unicode Character Database: Scripts|website=unicode.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | title = The Unicode Standard, Version 14.0 | chapter = Chapter 14: Additional Ancient and Historic Scripts | publisher = Unicode, Inc | date = September 2021 | ___location = Mountain View, CA | pages = 581 | url = https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode14.0.0/ch14.pdf | isbn = 978-1-936213-29-0 }}</ref> More scripts are in the process for encoding or have been tentatively allocated for encoding in roadmaps.<ref>https://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/ Roadmaps to Unicode</ref>