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What Is a Unicode Script?

A Unicode Script is a collection of characters used to write one or more human languages. Unlike blocks (which are contiguous code-point ranges), a script groups characters by their cultural and historical writing system: Latin, Arabic, Han, Devanagari, Georgian, and so on. Unicode 15.1 defines 161 scripts.

Every assigned character carries a Script property value. Characters not associated with any specific writing system receive the value Common (punctuation, digits, emoji) or Inherited (combining marks that inherit the script of their base character, such as combining diacritical marks).

Script vs. Block

The distinction is important in practice:

• The Latin script spans dozens of blocks: Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A through Latin Extended-G, IPA Extensions, and more.
• The CJK Unified Ideographs block contains characters that belong to multiple scripts (Han, and historically Bopomofo components).
• The Letterlike Symbols block is Script=Common because those symbols are used across many writing systems.

# Python 3.14+ exposes Script via unicodedata
import unicodedata

# unicodedata.script() — available in Python 3.14
for char in ["A", "α", "ب", "あ", "中"]:
    try:
        script = unicodedata.script(char)
    except AttributeError:
        script = "(requires Python 3.14)"
    print(f"{char}  Script={script}")

# A  Script=Latin
# α  Script=Greek
# ب  Script=Arabic
# あ Script=Hiragana
# 中 Script=Han

# On older Python, use the 'regex' package:
import regex
print(bool(regex.match(r'\p{Script=Latin}', 'A')))     # True
print(bool(regex.match(r'\p{Script=Arabic}', 'ب')))    # True

Script Extensions

Some characters are legitimately used in more than one script. The Script_Extensions property lists all scripts that use a given character. For example, U+0951 DEVANAGARI STRESS SIGN UDATTA appears in Devanagari, Bengali, Gujarati, and a dozen other Indic scripts—its Script is Inherited, but its Script_Extensions lists all the scripts that employ it. Implementations that need precise script-segmentation should consult Script_Extensions rather than Script alone.

# regex package supports Script_Extensions:
import regex
# Match a character used in the Devanagari OR Bengali script
pattern = regex.compile(r'[\p{Script_Extensions=Devanagari}\p{Script_Extensions=Bengali}]')

Quick Facts