Unicode: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:08, 3 June 2025

Revision as of 02:26, 3 June 2025

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{{Contains special characters|special=uncommon Unicode characters}}

'''Unicode''', formally '''''The Unicode Standard''''',{{refn|group="note"|1=Sometimes abbreviated as '''TUS'''.<ref>{{Cite web|date=27 March 2002 |title=Unicode Technical Report #28: Unicode 3.2 |url=https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr28/tr28-3.html#errata |access-date=23 June 2022 |website=Unicode Consortium}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Jenkins |first=John H. |date=26 August 2021 |title=Unicode Standard Annex #45: U-source Ideographs |url=https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr45/tr45-25.html |access-date=23 June 2022 |website=Unicode Consortium |at=§2.2 The Source Field}}</ref>}} is a [[character encoding]] standard maintained by the [[Unicode Consortium]] designed to support the use of text in all of the world's [[writing system]]s that can be digitized. Version 16.0 of the standard{{efn-ua|name=standard-latest}} defines {{val|154998}}154,998 [[Character (computing)|characters]] and 168 [[script (Unicode)|scripts]]<ref>{{multiref |<!-- Graphic + Format count is used here -->{{Cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/versions/stats/charcountv16_0.html|title=Unicode Character Count V16.0 |date=10 September 2024 |publisher=The Unicode Consortium}} | {{Cite web|title=Unicode 16.0 Versioned Charts Index|url=https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-16.0/ |publisher=The Unicode Consortium |date=10 September 2024}} | {{Cite web |title=Supported Scripts |url=https://www.unicode.org/standard/supported.html |access-date=11 September 2024 |date=10 September 2024 |publisher=The Unicode Consortium}} }}</ref> used in various ordinary, literary, academic, and technical contexts.

Many common characters, including numerals, punctuation, and other symbols, are unified within the standard and are not treated as specific to any given writing system. Unicode encodes 37903,790 [[emoji]], with the continued development thereof conducted by the Consortium as a part of the standard.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Emoji Counts, v16.0 |url=https://www.unicode.org/emoji/charts-16.0/emoji-counts.html |access-date=10 September 2024 |publisher=The Unicode Consortium}}</ref> Moreover, the widespread adoption of Unicode was in large part responsible for the initial popularization of emoji outside of Japan.{{citation needed|date=June 2025}} Unicode is ultimately capable of encoding more than 1.1 million characters.

Unicode has largely supplanted the previous environment of a myriad of incompatible [[character sets]], each used within different locales and on different computer architectures. Unicode is used to encode the vast majority of text on the Internet, including most [[web pages]], and relevant Unicode support has become a common consideration in contemporary software development.