Glossary of script-related terms
From OmegaWiki
- abugida
An abugida, or syllabics, is a writing system composed of base letters denoting consonants with an inherent following vowel, which are consistently modified to indicate other vowels, or the lack of a vowel.
Such a consonant with either an inherent or marked vowel is called an akshara.
The diacritics may appear above, below, to the left, or to the right of the consonantal character, they may surround it, or be indicated by turning it in in either of four directions, depending both on the script and the individual diacritic. Some scripts have agglomerate consonants, and place diacritics at their beginning or end, rather than attaching them to the actually modified syllable.- alphabet
An alphabet is a writing system where separate letters are used to denote a single tone such as the consonants and the vowels. At times, character combinations are used to denote language specific sounds that have no letters, also letters diacritics are used for this purpose. Some alphabetic scripts are used for writing several languages, sounds associated with individual letters of some vary widely between languages, and are sometimes rather unsystematic within a single language.
- alphabetic script
A script written, using an alphabet
- character
Any of a letter, a numeral, or single interpunctuation mark in a script or font
- diacritic
- directionality
The directionality of a script says, how it is written. There is:
- ltr
- left to right - text begins at the top left edge of a writing area and is written in lines extending right. When there is not enough space left on such a line, a line break is made at a select place determined by grammar and typographic rules, and writing is resumed at the left of the line below.
- rtl
- right to left - text begins at the top right edge of a writing area and is written in lines extending left. When there is not enough space left on such a line, a line break is made at a select point determined by grammar and typographic rules, then writing is resumed at the right end of the line below.
- var
- variable - some script can be used either left to right or right to left. This can be entirely up to a writers preference, or be different for socio-cultural groups, or have been varying at different times in history.
- und
- undetermined - for some historic scripts.
- none
- for unwritten scripts and signalled communication.
- final
- font
- glyph
- hieroglyph
- hieroglyphic script
A script written using hieroglyphs
- hyphen
A special interpunctuation mark being used at some line breaks
- hyphenation
- hyphenation mark
A special interpunctuation mark which does not print unless combined with an adjacent line break
- ideograph
- ideographic script
A script written with ideographs
- interpunktuation
'
- interpunktuation mark
'
- letter
- line break
- ligature
- ltr
left to right directionality
- rtl
right to left directionality
- numeral
- phonetic
- script
brezhoneg | па-беларуску | Deutsch | English | español | Kölsch | Nederlands | +/-
All written languages make use of a script. This is the collection of characters and diacritics that are used together to write. There are many scripts and many languages can be expressed in multiple scripts. There is a standard for scripts; the ISO-15924.
The scripts can be identified by using a four character code that can/should start with a capital. In the OmegaWiki list of languages, when a language is known in multiple scripts, we want to have a seperate entry per script for that language. One motivation is that we do not assume one script to be more relevant then another and, having them together does not look good.- spacing
- spelling
- syllable
- syllabic
- syllabic script
A script written using syllabics, or an abugida
- symbol
- variant
