ISO 15924, ''Codes for the representation of names of scripts'', is an

international standard international standard is a technical standard developed by one or more international standards organization, standards organizations. International standards are available for consideration and use worldwide. The most prominent such organization ...

defining codes for

writing systems A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable f ...

or ''scripts'' (a "set of graphic characters used for the written form of one or more languages"). Each script is given both a four-letter code and a numeric code. Where possible the codes are derived from

ISO 639-2 ISO 639- 2:1998, ''Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code'', is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. The three-letter codes given for ea ...

, where the name of a script and the name of a language using the script are identical (example: Gujarātī ISO 639 guj, ISO 15924 Gujr). Preference is given to the 639-2 Bibliographical codes, which is different from the otherwise often preferred use of the Terminological codes. 4-letter ISO 15924 codes are incorporated into the IANA Language Subtag Registry for

IETF language tag An IETF BCP 47 language tag is a standardized code or tag that is used to identify human languages in the Internet. The tag structure has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in ''Best Current Practice (BCP) 47''; the s ...

s and so can be used in file formats that make use of such language tags. For example, they can be used in

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...

and

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

to help

Web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

s determine which

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

to use for foreign text. This way one could differentiate, for example, between

Serbian Serbian may refer to: * someone or something related to Serbia, a country in Southeastern Europe * someone or something related to the Serbs, a South Slavic people * Serbian language * Serbian names See also * * * Old Serbian (disambiguation ...

written in the

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...

(sr-Cyrl) or

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

(sr-Latn) script, or mark

romanized Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...

transliterated Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...

text as such.

Maintenance

ISO appointed the

Unicode Consortium The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intentio ...

as the Registration Authority (RA) for the standard. The RA is responsible for appointing a registrar who works with a Joint Advisory Committee (JAC) in developing and implementing the standard. The registrar from 2004 to 2018 was

Michael Everson Michael Everson (born January 9, 1963) is an American and Irish linguist, script encoder, typesetter, type designer and publisher. He runs a publishing company called Evertype, through which he has published over a hundred books since 2006. H ...

, and from January 2019 the registrar has been Markus Scherer, a technical director of the Unicode Consortium. The JAC consists of six members: one representative of the RA (Markus Scherer), one representative of

(Randall K. Barry of the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

), one representative of ISO TC37 (Christian Galinski), one representative of ISO TC46 (Peeter Päll), and two representatives of

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 Coded character sets is a standardization subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), that devel ...

(Rick McGowan and Ken Whistler, both also officers of the Unicode Consortium).

Script codes

Numeric ranges

Hieroglyphic Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...

and

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge- ...

scripts * Right-to-left alphabetic scripts * Left-to-right alphabetic scripts * Alphasyllabic scripts *

Syllabic Syllabic may refer to: *Syllable, a unit of speech sound, considered the building block of words **Syllabic consonant, a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable *Syllabary, writing system using symbols for syllables *Abugida, writing system ...

scripts *

Ideographic An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiari ...

scripts *

Undeciphered scripts An undeciphered writing system is a written form of language that is not currently understood. Many undeciphered writing systems date from several thousand years BC, though some more modern examples do exist. The term "writing systems" is used ...

* Shorthands and other notations * (unassigned) * Private use, alias, special codes

Special codes

*: 50 Codes reserved for private use *:

Emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conv ...

*: Code for inherited script *:

Mathematical notation Mathematical notation consists of using symbols for representing operations, unspecified numbers, relations and any other mathematical objects, and assembling them into expressions and formulas. Mathematical notation is widely used in mathem ...

Symbols A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different co ...

*: Code for unwritten languages *: Code for undetermined script *: Code for uncoded script

Exceptionally reserved codes

Two four-letter codes are reserved at the request of the

Common Locale Data Repository The Common Locale Data Repository Project, often abbreviated as CLDR, is a project of the Unicode Consortium to provide locale data in XML format for use in computer applications. CLDR contains locale-specific information that an operating sys ...

(CLDR) project: *: Reserved for the language-neutral base of the CLDR locale tree *: Reserved for the boolean value "true"

List of codes

This list of codes is from the ISO 15924 standard.

Relations to other standards

The following standards are referred to as indispensable by ISO 15924. *

:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code * ISO/IEC 9541-1:1991 Information technology — Font information interchange — Part 1: Architecture * ISO/IEC 10646-1:2020 Information technology — Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) For definition of font and glyph the standard refers to * ISO/IEC 9541-1:1991 Around 160 scripts are defined in

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, ...

. Through a linkpin called "Property Value Alias", Unicode has made a 1:1 connection between a script defined, and its ISO 15924 standard. See

Script (Unicode) In Unicode, a script is a collection of letters and other written signs used to represent textual information in one or more writing systems. Some scripts support one and only one writing system and language, for example, Armenian. Other scri ...

Notes

References

External links

ISO 15924:2004

ISO 15924 Registration Authority
(

)
Official ISO 15924 code lists

{{DEFAULTSORT:ISO 15924 #15924 Writing systems 2004 introductions