Which characters?

In general, there is no ambiguity in the selection of Unicode characters to represent a given text. However, there are few situations which are a bit more delicate. Below are the generally applicable rules we follow; for rules which are specific to a language, see the notes for that language (accessible the translation lists).

The rules we follow are not necessarily universal: they are designed to work well for the text of the UDHR, which is entirely ordinary text (no math, etc).

We use U+0020 ‘ ’ SPACE ambiguously for all spaces, and do not use U+00A0 ‘ ’ NO-BREAK SPACE or U+202F ‘ ’ NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE.

We prefer to not use U+002D - HYPHEN-MINUS because it is an ambiguous character. Instead, we use U+2010 ‐ HYPHEN or U+2013 – EN DASH as appropriate. Another related character is U+2212 − MINUS SIGN, but there is no need for it in the UDHR. (Note: not all translations have been updated to follow this rule).

The texts are in no particular normal form.