Writing Systems of the World
A Cultural Journey Through Scripts
Each chapter explores a major writing system — its history, cultural significance, how it's encoded in Unicode, and what makes it technically interesting. The National Geographic of Unicode content.
The Latin Alphabet: From Rome to the Internet
The most widely used alphabet on the planet evolved from ancient Etruscan and Roman writing. This chapter traces its journey from stone inscriptions to Unicode's extensive Latin Extended blocks.
The Arabic Script: Right-to-Left and Beyond
Arabic is the world's second most widely used writing system, with complex contextual shaping and right-to-left rendering. This chapter explores its beauty, technical challenges, and Unicode implementation.
Chinese Characters: 20,000 Years of Writing
CJK characters are the largest single category in Unicode, with tens of thousands of ideographs. This chapter covers the history, the CJK Unification controversy, and the ever-growing Extension blocks.
The Korean Hangul: An Alphabet Designed by a King
Hangul was created in 1443 by King Sejong the Great as a scientifically designed alphabet. This chapter explores its brilliant design, jamo composition, syllable blocks, and algorithmic Unicode encoding.
Devanagari and the Indic Scripts
The Brahmic script family encompasses dozens of South Asian writing systems. This chapter explores Devanagari's complex conjuncts, the virama mechanism, and the challenges of rendering Indic scripts.
Japanese: Three Scripts in One
Japanese uniquely combines three script systems: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. This chapter explores mixed-script usage, fullwidth forms, ruby annotations, and the technical challenges of Japanese text processing.
The Greek Alphabet: From Philosophy to Physics
Greek letters have transcended their original writing system to become universal symbols in mathematics, science, and engineering. This chapter covers polytonic vs monotonic Greek, the Coptic extension, and mathematical symbol derivation.
Cyrillic: The Script That Spans Continents
Used by over 250 million people across Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, Cyrillic has many national variations. This chapter explores its linguistic diversity and the security implications of Latin-Cyrillic homoglyphs.
Hebrew: Ancient Script in the Digital Age
Hebrew is one of the oldest scripts still in daily use, with unique challenges including right-to-left directionality, cantillation marks, and the distinction between biblical and modern forms.
Thai, Khmer, and the Southeast Asian Scripts
Southeast Asian scripts present unique challenges: no word boundaries in Thai, complex stacking in Khmer, and intricate diacritics in Lao. This chapter explores how Unicode handles these writing systems.
Ge'ez (Ethiopic): Africa's Ancient Writing System
The Ge'ez script, used for Amharic and Tigrinya, is one of Africa's oldest indigenous writing systems. This chapter explores its unique syllabary structure and how it's encoded in Unicode.
The Endangered Scripts: Preserving Languages Through Unicode
Unicode plays a crucial role in language preservation by encoding endangered and minority scripts. This chapter explores Adlam, Osage, Nüshu, and the Script Encoding Initiative's mission.