digital typography Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online c ...

, combining characters are

characters Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining

diacritical marks A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

(including combining accents).

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

also contains many

precomposed character A precomposed character (alternatively composite character or decomposable character) is a Unicode entity that can also be defined as a sequence of one or more other characters. A precomposed character may typically represent a letter with a diacri ...

s, so that in many cases it is possible to use both combining diacritics and precomposed characters, at the user's or application's choice. This leads to a requirement to perform

Unicode normalization Unicode equivalence is the specification by the Unicode character encoding standard that some sequences of code points represent essentially the same character. This feature was introduced in the standard to allow compatibility with preexisting s ...

before comparing two Unicode strings and to carefully design encoding converters to correctly map all of the valid ways to represent a character in Unicode to a legacy encoding to avoid data loss. In Unicode, the main block of combining diacritics for European languages and the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

is U+0300–U+036F. Combining diacritical marks are also present in many other blocks of Unicode characters. In Unicode, diacritics are always added after the main character (in contrast to some older combining character sets such as

ANSEL ANSEL, the American National Standard for Extended Latin Alphabet Coded Character Set for Bibliographic Use, was a character set used in text encoding. It provided a table of coded values for the representation of characters of the extended Latin ...

), and it is possible to add several diacritics to the same character, including stacked diacritics above and below, though some systems may not render these well.

Unicode ranges

The following blocks are dedicated specifically to combining characters: *Combining Diacritical Marks (0300–036F), since version 1.0, with modifications in subsequent versions down to 4.1 *Combining Diacritical Marks Extended (1AB0–1AFF), version 7.0 *Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement (1DC0–1DFF), versions 4.1 to 5.2 *Combining Diacritical Marks for Symbols (20D0–20FF), since version 1.0, with modifications in subsequent versions down to 5.1 *Combining Half Marks (FE20–FE2F), versions 1.0, with modifications in subsequent versions down to 8.0 Combining characters are not limited to these blocks; for instance, the combining

dakuten The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing). The , ...

(U+3099) and combining

handakuten The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing). The , c ...

(U+309A) are in the Hiragana block, the

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...

block contains combining vowel signs and other marks for use with that script, and so forth. Combining characters are assigned the Unicode major category "M" ("Mark"). Codepoints U+032A and U+0346–034A are

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...

symbols: * U+032A : dental * U+0346 : dentolabial * U+0347 : alveolar * U+0348 : strong articulation * U+0349 : weak articulation * U+034A :

denasal In phonetics, denasalization is the loss of nasal airflow in a nasal sound, such as a nasal consonant or a nasal vowel. That may be due to speech pathology but also occurs when the sinuses are blocked from a common cold, when it is called a nas ...

Codepoints U+034B–034E are IPA diacritics for

disordered speech Speech disorders or speech impairments are a type of communication disorder in which normal speech is disrupted. This can mean stuttering, lisps, etc. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is considered mute. Speech skills are ...

: * U+034B : nasal escape * U+034C : velopharyngeal friction * U+034D : labial spreading * U+034E : whistled articulation U+034F is the "

combining grapheme joiner The combining grapheme joiner (CGJ), is a Unicode character that has no visible glyph and is "default ignorable" by applications. Its name is a misnomer and does not describe its function: the character does not join graphemes. Its purpose is to s ...

" (CGJ) and has no visible glyph. Codepoints U+035C–0362 are double diacritics, diacritic signs placed across two letters. Codepoints U+0363–036F are medieval superscript letter diacritics, letters written directly above other letters appearing in medieval Germanic manuscripts, but in some instances in use until as late as the 19th century. For example, U+0364 is an ''e'' written above the preceding letter, to be used for ( Early)

New High German New High German (NHG; german: Neuhochdeutsch (Nhd.)) is the term used for the most recent period in the history of the German language, starting in the 17th century. It is a loan translation of the German (). The most important characteristic o ...

umlaut notation, such as ''uͤ'' for Modern German ''ü''.

OpenType

OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...

has the ''ccmp'' "feature tag" to define glyphs that are compositions or decompositions involving combining characters, the ''mark'' tag to define the positioning of combining characters onto base glyph, and ''mkmk'' for the positionings of combining characters onto each other.

Zalgo text

Combining characters have been used to create

Zalgo text Zalgo text, also known as cursed text due to the nature of its use, is digital text that has been modified with numerous combining characters, Unicode symbols used to add diacritics above or below letters, to appear frightening or glitchy. Named ...

, which is text that appears "corrupted" or "creepy" due to an overuse of diacritics. This causes the text to extend vertically, overlapping other text.

Notes

External links

Combining diacritics chart
(in Adobe PDF format)
Combining diacritics supplement chart
(in Adobe PDF format)
Combining marks
test page facing combined and precomposed letters

DecodeUnicode.org combining diacritical marks reference
{{Unicode navigation Unicode special code points

Unicode ranges

OpenType

Zalgo text

See also

Notes

External links