Text & Unicode Glossary
Plain-English definitions for Unicode, internet text styles, encoding systems, and everything in between.
9 terms. Each page has a definition, examples, linked sources and the related tools.
Unicode
Unicode is a shared standard for encoded character identities and properties. Encodings such as UTF-8 represent Unicode text as data; fonts determine its visible shapes.
Read definitionZalgo Text
Zalgo text is glitchy, creepy-looking text made by piling Unicode combining marks onto ordinary letters.
Read definitionMorse Code
Morse code represents letters and numbers with short and long signals, and the gaps between them separate letters and words.
Read definitionKaomoji
Kaomoji are upright text faces built from punctuation, letters and symbols. They copy as plain Unicode text, and how they look depends on the font and the app.
Read definitionInvisible Character
An invisible character takes up space or has an effect without drawing a visible mark. Zero-width controls, spaces and blank symbols each work differently.
Read definitionASCII Art
ASCII art is a picture drawn with ordinary keyboard characters. Strictly it uses only the printable ASCII range U+0020 to U+007E; box-drawing and block characters are Unicode text art.
Read definitionBraille Alphabet
Braille is a tactile writing system. Dot patterns represent letters and other meanings according to a language code and context.
Read definitionNATO Phonetic Alphabet
The NATO phonetic alphabet assigns a code word to each letter A to Z, such as Alfa, Bravo and Charlie, for spelling aloud.
Read definitionBinary Code
Binary represents values with the digits 0 and 1. Interpreting a bit sequence as text requires an encoding such as UTF-8; the bits alone do not declare their meaning.
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