Latin

Updated Tue 15 Oct 2017 • tags latin, scriptnotes

This page provides information about the characteristics of the Latin script, as described in the Writing Systems Tutorial. It is not intended to be exhaustively scientific – merely to give a basic idea of the essential features of the script.

Click on the orange text in the table to the right to see more details about that aspect of the script. Click on red text in the main sample area to see a list of code points for that text.

Sample (Hungarian)

Ha a világ beszélni akarna, Unicode-ul szólalna meg. Regisztráljon már most a Tizedik Nemzetközi Unicode Konferenciára, melyet 1997. március 10-12-én rendeznek Meinz-ban, Németországban. Ezen a konferencián az iparág több neves szakértője is résztvesz. Ízelítőül a témákból: a világháló és a Unicode nemzetközisítése és lokalizálása, a Unicode alkalmazása működő rendszerekben és alkalmazásokban, szövegelrendezésnél, és többnyelvű számítógépeken.

Script name

Latin

Script type alphabet
Number of characters (not including phonetic or combining blocks) 1015
Case distinction? no
Combining characters 0
Multiple combining characters no
Context-based positioning no
Contextual shaping no
Cursive script no
Many more glyphs than characters? no
Text direction ltr
Baseline mid
Space is word separator yes
Wraps at word
Justification word
Native digits? yes

Click on the orange text in the features list (right column) to see examples and notes. Click on highlighted text in the Sample section to see the characters. Click on the vertical blue bar, bottom right, to change font settings.

Justification

Justification is done, principally, by adjusting the space between words. (High-end systems may also adjust inter-character spacing slightly if inter-word doesn't resolve the issue, or to improve aesthetics.)

You can justify the text in the Sample section using this control.

Character list

The Latin script characters in Unicode 7.0 are spread across 8 blocks (not counting the phonetic blocks nor any of the combining character blocks):

The following is an incomplete list of languages and the number of characters they use, per version 26 of CLDR's lists of characters (exemplarCharacters).

First published 2012. This version 2017-10-15 9:42 GMT.  •  Copyright r12a@w3.org. Licence CC-By.