Chapter 21
Notational Systems
Braille consists of a related set of notational systems, using raised dots embossed on paper or other mediums to provide a tactile writing system for the blind. The patterns of dots are associated with the letters or syllables of other writing systems, but the particular rules of association vary from language to language. The Unicode Standard encodes a complete set of symbols for the shapes of Braille patterns; however the association of letters to the patterns is left to other standards. Text should normally be represented using the regular Unicode characters of the script. Only when the intent is to convey a particular binding of text to a Braille pattern sequence should it be represented using the symbols for the Braille patterns.
Musical notation—particularly Western musical notation—is different from ordinary text in the way it is laid out, especially the representation of pitch and duration in Western musical notation. However, ordinary text commonly refers to the basic graphical elements that are used in musical notation, so such symbols are encoded in the Unicode Standard. Additional sets of symbols for Ancient Greek, Byzantine, and Znamenny notation are encoded to support historical systems of musical notation.
Duployan is an uncased, alphabetic stenographic writing system invented by Emile Duployé, and published in 1860. It was one of the two most commonly used French shorthands. The Duployan shorthands are used as a secondary shorthand for writing French, English, German, Spanish, and Romanian. An adaptation and augmentation of Duployan was used as an alternate primary script for several First Nations’ languages in interior British Columbia, Canada.
Sutton SignWriting is a notational system developed in 1974 by Valerie Sutton and used for the transcription of many sign languages. It is a featural writing system, in which visually iconic basic symbols are arranged in two-dimensional layout to form snapshots of the individual signs of a sign language, which are roughly equivalent to words. The Unicode Standard encodes the basic symbols as atomic characters or combining character sequences.
#21.1 Braille
#21.1.1 Braille Patterns: U+2800–U+28FF
Braille is a writing system used by blind people worldwide. It uses a system of six or eight raised dots, arranged in two vertical rows of three or four dots, respectively. Eight-dot systems build on six-dot systems by adding two extra dots above or below the core matrix. Six-dot Braille allows 64 possible combinations, and eight-dot Braille allows 256 possible patterns of dot combinations. There is no fixed correspondence between a dot pattern and a character or symbol of any given script. Dot pattern assignments are dependent on context and user community. A single pattern can represent an abbreviation or a frequently occurring short word. For a number of contexts and user communities, the series of ISO technical reports starting with ISO/TR 11548-1 provide standardized correspondence tables as well as invocation sequences to indicate a context switch.
The Unicode Standard encodes a single complete set of 256 eight-dot patterns. This set includes the 64 dot patterns needed for six-dot Braille.
The character names for Braille patterns are based on the assignments of the dots of the Braille pattern to digits 1 to 8 as follows:
| 1 | ●● | 4 |
| 2 | ●● | 5 |
| 3 | ●● | 6 |
| 7 | ●● | 8 |
The designation of dots 1 to 6 corresponds to that of six-dot Braille. The additional dots 7 and 8 are added beneath. The character name for a Braille pattern consists of BRAILLE PATTERN DOTS-12345678, where only those digits corresponding to dots in the pattern are included. The name for the empty pattern is BRAILLE PATTERN BLANK.
The 256 Braille patterns are arranged in the same sequence as in ISO/TR 11548-1, which is based on an octal number generated from the pattern arrangement. Octal numbers are associated with each dot of a Braille pattern in the following way:
| 1 | ●● | 10 |
| 2 | ●● | 20 |
| 4 | ●● | 40 |
| 100 | ●● | 200 |
The octal number is obtained by adding the values corresponding to the dots present in the pattern. Octal numbers smaller than 100 are expanded to three digits by inserting leading zeroes. For example, the dots of BRAILLE PATTERN DOTS-1247 are assigned to the octal values of 18, 28, 108, and 1008. The octal number representing the sum of these values is 1138.
The assignment of meanings to Braille patterns is outside the scope of this standard.
#Example. According to ISO/TR 11548-2, the character LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F can be represented in eight-dot Braille by the combination of the dots 1, 2, 4, and 7 (BRAILLE PATTERN DOTS-1247). A full circle corresponds to a tangible (set) dot, and empty circles serve as position indicators for dots not set within the dot matrix:
| 1 | ●● | 4 |
| 2 | ●○ | 5 |
| 3 | ○○ | 6 |
| 7 | ●○ | 8 |
#Usage Model. The eight-dot Braille patterns in the Unicode Standard are intended to be used with either style of eight-dot Braille system, whether the additional two dots are considered to be in the top row or in the bottom row. These two systems are never intermixed in the same context, so their distinction is a matter of convention. The intent of encoding the 256 Braille patterns in the Unicode Standard is to allow input and output devices to be implemented that can interchange Braille data without having to go through a context-dependent conversion from semantic values to patterns, or vice versa. In this manner, final-form documents can be exchanged and faithfully rendered. At the same time, processing of textual data that require semantic support is intended to take place using the regular character assignments in the Unicode Standard.
#Imaging. When output on a Braille device, dots shown as black are intended to be rendered as tangible. Dots shown in the standard as open circles are blank (not rendered as tangible). The Unicode Standard does not specify any physical dimension of Braille characters.
In the absence of a higher-level protocol, Braille patterns are output from left to right. When used to render final form (tangible) documents, Braille patterns are normally not intermixed with any other Unicode characters except control codes.
#Script. Unlike other sets of symbols, the Braille Patterns are given their own, unique value of the Script property in the Unicode Standard. This follows both from the behavior of Braille in forming a consistent writing system on its own terms, as well as from the independent bibliographic status of books and other documents printed in Braille. For more information on the Script property, see Unicode Standard Annex #24, “Unicode Script Property.”
#21.2 Western Musical Symbols
#21.2.1 Musical Symbols: U+1D100–U+1D1FF
The musical symbols encoded in the Musical Symbols block are intended to cover basic Western musical notation and its antecedents: mensural notation and plainsong (or Gregorian) notation, as well as closely related systems, such as Kievan notation. The most comprehensive coded language in regular use for representing sound is the common musical notation (CMN) of the Western world. Western musical notation is a system of symbols that is relatively, but not completely, self-consistent and relatively stable but still, like music itself, evolving. This open-ended system has survived over time partly because of its flexibility and extensibility. In the Unicode Standard, musical symbols have been drawn primarily from CMN. Commonly recognized additions to the CMN repertoire, such as quarter-tone accidentals, cluster noteheads, and shape-note noteheads, have also been included.
Graphical score elements are not included in the Musical Symbols block. These pictographs are usually created for a specific repertoire or sometimes even a single piece. Characters that have some specialized meaning in music but that are found in other character blocks are not included. They include numbers for time signatures and figured basses, letters for section labels and Roman numeral harmonic analysis, and so on.
Musical symbols are used worldwide in a more or less standard manner by a very large group of users. The symbols frequently occur in running text and may be treated as simple spacing characters with no special properties, with a few exceptions. Musical symbols are used in contexts such as theoretical works, pedagogical texts, terminological dictionaries, bibliographic databases, thematic catalogs, and databases of musical data. The musical symbol characters are also intended to be used within higher-level protocols, such as music description languages and file formats for the representation of musical data and musical scores.
Because of the complexities of layout and of pitch representation in general, the encoding of musical pitch is intentionally outside the scope of the Unicode Standard. The Musical Symbols block provides a common set of elements for interchange and processing. Encoding of pitch, and layout of the resulting musical structure, involves specifications not only for the vertical relationship between multiple notes simultaneously, but also in multiple staves, between instrumental parts, and so forth. These musical features are expected to be handled entirely in higher-level protocols making use of the graphical elements provided. Lack of pitch encoding is not a shortcoming, but rather is a necessary feature of the encoding.
#Glyphs. The glyphs for musical symbols shown in the code charts, are representative of typical cases; however, note in particular that the stem direction is not specified by the Unicode Standard and can be determined only in context. For a font that is intended to provide musical symbols in running text, either stem direction is acceptable. In some contexts—particularly for applications in early music—note heads, stems, flags, and other associated symbols may need to be rendered in different colors—for example, red.
#Symbols in Other Blocks. U+266D MUSIC FLAT SIGN, U+266E MUSIC NATURAL SIGN, and U+266F MUSIC SHARP SIGN—three characters that occur frequently in musical notation—are encoded in the Miscellaneous Symbols block (U+2600..U+267F). However, four characters also encoded in that block are to be interpreted merely as dingbats or miscellaneous symbols, not as representing actual musical notes:
U+2669 QUARTER NOTE
U+266A EIGHTH NOTE
U+266B BEAMED EIGHTH NOTES
U+266C BEAMED SIXTEENTH NOTES
#Processing. Most musical symbols can be thought of as simple spacing characters when used inline within texts and examples, even though they behave in a more complex manner in full musical layout. Some characters are meant only to be combined with others to produce combined character sequences, representing musical notes and their particular articulations. Musical symbols can be input, processed, and displayed in a manner similar to mathematical symbols. When embedded in text, most of the symbols are simple spacing characters with no special properties. A few characters have format control functions, as described later in this section.
#Input Methods. Musical symbols can be entered via standard alphanumeric keyboard, via piano keyboard or other device, or by a graphical method. Keyboard input of the musical symbols may make use of techniques similar to those used for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. In addition, input methods utilizing pointing devices or piano keyboards could be developed similar to those in existing musical layout systems. For example, within a graphical user interface, the user could choose symbols from a palette-style menu.
#Directionality. When combined with right-to-left texts—in Hebrew or Arabic, for example—the musical notation is usually written from left to right in the normal manner. The words are divided into syllables and placed under or above the notes in the same fashion as for Latin and other left-to-right scripts. The individual words or syllables corresponding to each note, however, are written in the dominant direction of the script.
The opposite approach is also known: in some traditions, the musical notation is actually written from right to left. In that case, some of the symbols, such as clef signs, are mirrored; other symbols, such as notes, flags, and accidentals, are not mirrored. All responsibility for such details of bidirectional layout lies with higher-level protocols and is not reflected in any character properties. Figure 21-1 exemplifies this principle with two musical passages. The first example shows Turkish lyrics in Arabic script with ordinary left-to-right musical notation; the second shows right-to-left musical notation. Note the partial mirroring.
#Format Characters. Extensive ligature-like beams are used frequently in musical notation between groups of notes having short values. The practice is widespread and very predictable, so it is therefore amenable to algorithmic handling. The format characters U+1D173 MUSICAL SYMBOL BEGIN BEAM and U+1D174 MUSICAL SYMBOL END BEAM can be used to indicate the extents of beam groupings. In some exceptional cases, beams are left unclosed on one end. This status can be indicated with a U+1D159 MUSICAL SYMBOL NULL NOTEHEAD character if no stem is to appear at the end of the beam.
Similarly, format characters have been provided for other connecting structures. The characters U+1D175 MUSICAL SYMBOL BEGIN TIE, U+1D176 MUSICAL SYMBOL END TIE, U+1D177 MUSICAL SYMBOL BEGIN SLUR, U+1D178 MUSICAL SYMBOL END SLUR, U+1D179 MUSICAL SYMBOL BEGIN PHRASE, and U+1D17A MUSICAL SYMBOL END PHRASE indicate the extent of these features. Like beaming, these features are easily handled in an algorithmic fashion.
These pairs of characters modify the layout and grouping of notes and phrases in full musical notation. When musical examples are written or rendered in plain text without special software, the start/end format characters may be rendered as brackets or left uninterpreted. To the extent possible, more sophisticated software that renders musical examples inline with natural-language text might interpret them in their actual format control capacity, rendering slurs, beams, and so forth, as appropriate.
#Precomposed Note Characters. For maximum flexibility, the character set includes both precomposed note values and primitives from which complete notes may be constructed. The precomposed versions are provided mainly for convenience. However, if any normalization form is applied, including NFC, the characters will be decomposed. For further information, see Section 3.11, Normalization Forms. The canonical equivalents for these characters are given in the Unicode Character Database and are illustrated in Figure 21-2.
#Alternative Noteheads. More complex notes built up from alternative noteheads, stems, flags, and articulation symbols are necessary for complete implementations and complex scores. Examples of their use include American shape-note and modern percussion notations, as shown in the first line of Figure 21-3.
U+1D159 MUSICAL SYMBOL NULL NOTEHEAD is a special notehead that has no distinct visual appearance of its own. It can be used as an anchor for a combining flag in complicated musical scoring. For example, in a beamed sequence of notes, the beam might be extended beyond visible notes, as shown in the second line of Figure 21-3. Even though the null notehead has no visual appearance of its own, it is not a default ignorable code point; some indication of its presence, as for instance a dotted box glyph, should be shown if displayed outside of a context that supports full musical rendering.
#Augmentation Dots and Articulation Symbols. Augmentation dots and articulation symbols may be appended to either the precomposed or built-up notes. In addition, augmentation dots and articulation symbols may be repeated as necessary to build a complete note symbol. Examples of the use of augmentation dots and articulation symbols are shown in Figure 21-4.
#Ornamentation. Table 21-1 lists common eighteenth-century ornaments and the sequences of characters from which they can be generated.
| 𝆜𝆝 | 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19D STROKE-3 |
| O | 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D1A0 STROKE-6 + 1D19D STROKE-3 |
| P | 1D1A0 STROKE-6 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19D STROKE-3 |
| Q | 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D1A0 STROKE-6 + 1D19D STROKE-3 |
| R | 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D1A3 STROKE-9 |
| S | 1D1A1 STROKE-7 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19D STROKE-3 |
| T | 1D1A2 STROKE-8 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19D STROKE-3 |
| U | 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19D STROKE-3 + 1D19F STROKE-5 |
| V | 1D1A1 STROKE-7 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D1A0 STROKE-6 + 1D19D STROKE-3 |
| W | 1D1A1 STROKE-7 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19D STROKE-3 + 1D19F STROKE-5 |
| X | 1D1A2 STROKE-8 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D1A0 STROKE-6 + 1D19D STROKE-3 |
| Y | 1D19B STROKE-1 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19D STROKE-3 |
| Z | 1D19B STROKE-1 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19D STROKE-3 + 1D19E STROKE-4 |
| [ | 1D19C STROKE-2 + 1D19D STROKE-3 + 1D19E STROKE-4 |
#Gregorian. The punctum, or Gregorian brevis, a square shape, is unified with U+1D147 MUSICAL SYMBOL SQUARE NOTEHEAD BLACK. The Gregorian semibrevis, a diamond or lozenge shape, is unified with U+1D1BA MUSICAL SYMBOL SEMIBREVIS BLACK. Thus Gregorian notation, medieval notation, and modern notation either require separate fonts in practice or need font features to make subtle differentiations between shapes where required.
#Kievan. Kievan musical notation is a form of linear musical notation found in religious chant books of the Russian Orthodox Church, among others. It is also referred to as East Slavic musical notation. The notation originated in the 1500s, and the first books using Kievan notation were published in 1772. The notation is still used today.
Unlike Western plainchant, Kievan is written on a five-line staff (encoded at U+1D11A) with uniquely shaped notes, and several distinct symbols, including its own C clef and flat signs. U+1D1DF MUSICAL SYMBOL KIEVAN END OF PIECE is analogous to the Western U+1D102 MUSICAL SYMBOL FINAL BARLINE.
Beaming is used in Kievan notation occasionally, and the existing musical format characters encoded between U+1D173 and U+1D17A may be used in implementations of beaming in higher-level protocols.
#Persian. Persian traditional music uses intervals that are approximately equivalent to a quarter-tone, but which are not equal-tempered. The 20th-century composer Ali-Naqi Vaziri introduced two symbols, called sori and koron, to represent these intervals. They are encoded as U+1D1E9 𝇩 MUSICAL SYMBOL SORI and U+1D1EA 𝇪 MUSICAL SYMBOL KORON. The sori is analogous to U+1D132 𝄲 MUSICAL SYMBOL QUARTER TONE SHARP, while the koron is analogous to U+1D133 𝄳 MUSICAL SYMBOL QUARTER TONE FLAT.
#21.3 Byzantine Musical Symbols
#21.3.1 Byzantine Musical Symbols: U+1D000–U+1D0FF
Byzantine musical notation first appeared in the seventh or eighth century CE, developing more fully by the tenth century. These musical symbols are chiefly used to write the religious music and hymns of the Christian Orthodox Church, although folk music manuscripts are also known. In 1881, the Orthodox Patriarchy Musical Committee redefined some of the signs and established the New Analytical Byzantine Musical Notation System, which is in use today. About 95% of the more than 7,000 musical manuscripts using this system are in Greek. Other manuscripts are in Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Arabic.
#Processing. Computer representation of Byzantine musical symbols is quite recent, although typographic publication of religious music books began in 1820. Two kinds of applications have been developed: applications to enable musicians to write the books they use, and applications that compare or convert this musical notation system to the standard Western system. (See Section 21.2, Western Musical Symbols.)
Byzantine musical symbols are divided into 15 classes according to function. Characters interact with one another in the horizontal and vertical dimension. There are three horizontal “stripes” in which various classes generally appear and rules as to how other characters interact within them. These rules, which are still being specified, are the responsibilities of higher-level protocols.
#21.4 Znamenny Musical Notation
#21.4.1 Znamenny Musical Notation: U+1CF00–U+1CFCF
Znamenny musical notation is used to write Znamenny chant, a form of liturgical singing that developed in Russia in the 11th century CE. Znamenny chant was the predominant form of liturgical music used in Russia and Ukraine until the late 17th century. After that time, Russian Old Ritualists, as well as some monasteries and parishes within the mainline Russian Orthodox Church, continued to use Znamenny musical notation.
While Znamenny chant has limited modern use within the Russian Orthodox Church, musicologists and liturgists began academic research into Znamenny chant in the 19th century, and this research continues today. Derived from an early form of Byzantine musical notation, Znamenny notation developed over five centuries, and came to form a unique notation system. Notably, Znamenny notation does not use a lined staff. In Znamenny notation, neumes are a note or a group of notes to be sung to a single syllable.
#Classification. Modern Znamemmy notation has three varieties: types A, B, and C. The earliest is Type C notation, which occurs in musical manuscripts from the 15th century onward and lacks any markings indicating pitch. Type B notation arose in the first half of the 17th century, when special marks indicating pitch and dynamics were introduced. Historically, these marks were made in red ink, so they were called Cinnabar or Shaidur marks. This block in the Unicode Standard primarily encodes the system of Cinnabar marks documented in the 1670 treatise Izveshchenie o soglasneyshikh pometakh.
#Priznaki. In the late 17th century Znamenny notation needed to be typeset on the newly developed printing press. Because the available type technology did not allow simultaneous printing of neumes in black and red ink, a monochrome system of alternate pitch marks was devised using small dashes, called priznaki, to indicate pitch. This system came to be used alongside the Cinnabar marks in a unified writing system. Notation bearing both the priznaki and Cinnabar marks is called Type A notation.
#21.5 Ancient Greek Musical Notation
#21.5.1 Ancient Greek Musical Notation: U+1D200–U+1D24F
Ancient Greeks developed their own distinct system of musical notation, which is found in a large number of ancient texts ranging from a fragment of Euripides’ Orestes to Christian hymns. It is also used in the modern publication of these texts as well as in modern studies of ancient music.
The system covers about three octaves, and symbols can be grouped by threes: one symbol corresponds to a “natural” note on a diatonic scale, and the two others to successive sharpenings of that first note. There is no distinction between enharmonic and chromatic scales. The system uses two series of symbols: one for vocal melody and one for instrumental melody.
The symbols are based on Greek letters, comparable to the modern usage of the Latin letters A through G to refer to notes of the Western musical scale. However, rather than using a sharp and flat notation to indicate semitones, or casing and other diacritics to indicate distinct octaves, the Ancient Greek system extended the basic Greek alphabet by rotating and flipping letterforms in various ways and by adding a few more symbols not directly based on letters.
#Unification. In the Unicode Standard, the vocal and instrumental systems are unified with each other and with the basic Greek alphabet, based on shape. Table 21-2 gives the correspondence between modern notes, the numbering used by modern scholars, and the Unicode characters or sequences of characters to use to represent them.
| Modern Note | Modern Number | Vocal Notation | Instrumental Notation |
|---|---|---|---|
| g″ | 70 | 2127, 0374 | 1D23C, 0374 |
| 69 | 0391, 0374 | 1D23B, 0374 | |
| 68 | 0392, 0374 | 1D23A, 0374 | |
| f″ | 67 | 0393, 0374 | 039D, 0374 |
| 66 | 0394, 0374 | 1D239, 0374 | |
| 65 | 0395, 0374 | 1D208, 0374 | |
| e″ | 64 | 0396, 0374 | 1D238, 0374 |
| 63 | 0397, 0374 | 1D237, 0374 | |
| 62 | 0398, 0374 | 1D20D, 0374 | |
| d″ | 61 | 0399, 0374 | 1D236, 0374 |
| 60 | 039A, 0374 | 1D235, 0374 | |
| 59 | 039B, 0374 | 1D234, 0374 | |
| c″ | 58 | 039C, 0374 | 1D233, 0374 |
| 57 | 039D, 0374 | 1D232, 0374 | |
| 56 | 039E, 0374 | 1D20E, 0374 | |
| b′ | 55 | 039F, 0374 | 039A, 0374 |
| 54 | 1D21C | 1D241 | |
| 53 | 1D21B | 1D240 | |
| a′ | 52 | 1D21A | 1D23F |
| 51 | 1D219 | 1D23E | |
| 50 | 1D218 | 1D23D | |
| g′ | 49 | 2127 | 1D23C |
| 48 | 0391 | 1D23B | |
| 47 | 0392 | 1D23A | |
| f′ | 46 | 0393 | 039D |
| 45 | 0394 | 1D239 | |
| 44 | 0395 | 1D208 | |
| e′ | 43 | 0396 | 1D238 |
| 42 | 0397 | 1D237 | |
| 41 | 0398 | 1D20D | |
| d′ | 40 | 0399 | 1D236 |
| 39 | 039A | 1D235 | |
| 38 | 039B | 1D234 | |
| c′ | 37 | 039C | 1D233 |
| 36 | 039D | 1D232 | |
| 35 | 039E | 1D20E | |
| b | 34 | 039F | 039A |
| 33 | 03A0 | 03FD | |
| 32 | 03A1 | 1D231 | |
| a | 31 | 03F9 | 03F9 |
| 30 | 03A4 | 1D230 | |
| 29 | 03A5 | 1D22F | |
| g | 28 | 03A6 | 1D213 |
| 27 | 03A7 | 1D22E | |
| 26 | 03A8 | 1D22D | |
| f | 25 | 03A9 | 1D22C |
| 24 | 1D217 | 1D22B | |
| 23 | 1D216 | 1D22A | |
| e | 22 | 1D215 | 0393 |
| 21 | 1D214 | 1D205 | |
| 20 | 1D213 | 1D21C | |
| d | 19 | 1D212 | 1D229 |
| 18 | 1D211 | 1D228 | |
| 17 | 1D210 | 1D227 | |
| c | 16 | 1D20F | 0395 |
| 15 | 1D20E | 1D211 | |
| 14 | 1D20D | 1D226 | |
| B | 13 | 1D20C | 1D225 |
| 12 | 1D20B | 1D224 | |
| 11 | 1D20A | 1D223 | |
| A | 10 | 1D209 | 0397 |
| 9 | 1D208 | 1D206 | |
| 8 | 1D207 | 1D222 | |
| G | 7 | 1D206 | 1D221 |
| 6 | 1D205 | 03A4 | |
| 5 | 1D204 | 1D220 | |
| F | 4 | 1D203 | 1D21F |
| 3 | 1D202 | 1D202 | |
| 2 | 1D201 | 1D21E | |
| E | 1 | 1D200 | 1D21D |
#Naming Conventions. The character names are based on the standard names widely used by modern scholars. There is no standardized ancient system for naming these characters. Apparent gaps in the numbering sequence are due to the unification with standard letters and between vocal and instrumental notations.
If a symbol is used in both the vocal notation system and the instrumental notation system, its Unicode character name is based on the vocal notation system catalog number. Thus U+1D20D GREEK VOCAL NOTATION SYMBOL-14 has a glyph based on an inverted capital lambda. In the vocal notation system, it represents the first sharp of B; in the instrumental notation system, it represents the first sharp of d’. Because it is used in both systems, its name is based on its sequence in the vocal notation system, rather than its sequence in the instrumental notation system. The character names list in the Unicode Character Database is fully annotated with the functions of the symbols for each system.
#Font. Scholars usually typeset musical characters in sans-serif fonts to distinguish them from standard letters, which are usually represented with a serifed font. However, this is not required. The code charts use a font without serifs for reasons of clarity.
#Combining Marks. The combining marks encoded in the range U+1D242..U+1D244 are placed over the vocal or instrumental notation symbols. They are used to indicate metrical qualities.
#21.6 Duployan
#21.6.1 Duployan: U+1BC00–U+1BC9F
The Duployan shorthands are used to write French, English, German, Spanish, and Romanian. The original Duployan shorthand was invented by Emile Duployé, and published in 1860 as a stenographic shorthand for French. It was one of the two most commonly used French shorthands. There are three main English adaptations from the late 19th and early 20th centuries based on Duployan: Pernin, Sloan, and Perrault. None were as popular as the Gregg and Pitman shorthands.
An adaptation and augmentation of Duployan by Father Jean Marie Raphael LeJeune was used as an alternate primary script for several First Nations’ languages in interior British Columbia, including Chinook Jargon, Okanagan, Lilooet, Shushwap, and North Thompson. Its original use and greatest surviving attestation is from the Kamloops Wawa, a Chinook Jargon newsletter of the Catholic diocese of Kamloops, British Columbia, published 1891–1923. Chinook Jargon was a trade language widely spoken from southeast Alaska to northern California, from the Pacific to the Rockies, and sporadically outside this area. The Chinook script uses the basic Duployan inventory, with the addition of several derived letterforms and compound letters.
#Structure. Duployan is an uncased, alphabetic stenographic writing system. The model letterforms are generally based on circles and lines. It is a left-to-right script.
The basic inventory of consonant and vowel signs has been augmented over the years to provide more efficient shorthands and has been adapted to the phonologies of languages other than the original French. The Romanian Pernin, Perrault, and Sloan stenographic orthographies add a few letters or letterforms, ideographs, and several combined letters.
The core repertoire of Duployan contains several classes of letters, differentiated primarily by visual form and stroke direction, and nominally by phonetic value. Letter classes include the line consonants (P, T, F, K, and L-type), arc consonants (M, N, J, and S-type), circle vowels (A and O vowels), nasal vowels, and orienting vowels (U/EU, I/E). In addition, the Chinook writing contains spacing letters, compound consonants, and a logograph.
The extended Duployan shorthand includes four other letter classes—the complex letters (multisyllabic symbols with consonant forms), and high, low, and connecting terminals for common word endings. The repertoire also includes U+1BC9D DUPLOYAN THICK LETTER SELECTOR, which modifies a preceding Duployan character by causing it to be rendered bold.
For further details and discussion of implementation of rendering for Duployan, see Unicode Technical Note #37, “Duployan Shorthand Rendering Model.”
#Representative Glyphs. The representative glyphs used in the Unicode code charts for Duployan characters often include additional information about direction of strokes and/or relative position for connecting terminals. In particular, for letters that are differentiated by stroke direction, small arrows are placed next to the glyphs for those letters in the code charts, to indicate that the stroke direction is upwards or downwards, for example. These small arrows are intended to help identify and distinguish such letter pairs, and would not be included as part of glyphs in fonts for rendering connected Duployan text. In a similar manner, for some attached affixes, the representative glyphs are shown together with dotted lines that indicate contrasts in the relative position of their attachment, but which are not displayed in rendered text.
#21.6.2 Shorthand Format Controls: U+1BCA0–U+1BCAF
Many systems of shorthand use overlapping letters to indicate abbreviations and initialisms. (Initialisms are abbreviations that are pronounced one letter at a time, such as IBM or HTML.) Such non-default text flow may be controlled with the shorthand format controls. U+1BCA0 SHORTHAND FORMAT LETTER OVERLAP indicates a single letter overlap, with the text continuing to flow as if that overlapping character did not exist. U+1BCA1 SHORTHAND FORMAT CONTINUING OVERLAP indicates a continuing overlap where the text flow proceeds from the overlapping character. In Duployan, the overlapping behavior is limited to consonants, circle vowels, and orienting vowels overlapping consonants.
There are two other “step” format controls used with word endings and contractions in specific contexts. U+1BCA2 SHORTHAND FORMAT DOWN STEP indicates downstep, which means that a following character should be rendered below the previous character, with any subsequent joined characters proceeding relative to the lowered glyph. U+1BCA3 SHORTHAND FORMAT UP STEP indicates upstep, which causes the following word or stenographic full stop to be raised.
#21.7 Sutton SignWriting
#21.7.1 Sutton SignWriting: U+1D800–U+1DAAF
Sutton SignWriting is a notational system developed in 1974 by Valerie Sutton and used for the transcription of many sign languages. It is designed to represent physical formations of sign language signs precisely, and is used in a number of publications. More information about the notational system and catalogs of signs can be found on the Sutton SignWriting websites http://www.signwriting.org/ and http://www.signbank.org/.
#Structure. Sutton SignWriting is a featural writing system, in which visually iconic basic symbols are arranged in two-dimensional layout to form snapshots of the individual signs of a sign language, which are roughly equivalent to words. The Unicode Standard encodes the basic symbols as atomic characters or combining character sequences. The spatial arrangement of the symbols is an essential part of the writing system, but constitutes a higher-level protocol beyond the scope of the Unicode Standard.
#Repertoire. The repertoire of Sutton SignWriting is comprised of characters for handshapes, which are the configurations that the hands take in signing, as well as characters for contact, movement, head and face, body, and location. The repertoire also includes five punctuation marks and twenty characters that indicate fill and rotation.
The head and face characters are used in combining character sequences to represent facial expressions. The character sequences are formed with U+1D9FF SIGNWRITING HEAD as base, followed by nonspacing marks from the ranges U+1DA00..U+1DA36 and U+1DA3B..U+1DA6C. These nonspacing marks represent expressions or movements of the eyes, cheeks, mouth, and so on, and include such characters as U+1DA17 SIGNWRITING EYE BLINK SINGLE and U+1DA3E SIGNWRITING MOUTH SMILE.
#Modifiers. The fill and rotation characters are nonspacing combining marks that modify a base character to create various realizations of the base character. For example, the handshape U+1D800 SIGNWRITING HAND-FIST INDEX can be modified by a fill character, a rotation character, or both to represent different positions of that handshape and to distinguish between the left and the right hand.
There are five fill modifiers, U+1DA9B SIGNWRITING FILL MODIFIER-2 through U+1DA9F SIGNWRITING FILL MODIFIER-6, and fifteen rotation modifiers, U+1DAA1 SIGNWRITING ROTATION MODIFIER-2 through U+1DAAF SIGNWRITING ROTATION MODIFIER-16. There are no explicit modifiers encoded for fill-1 or rotation-1, as those values are considered inherent in the base character. When both a fill and a rotation modifier are used in a combining character sequence, the fill modifier precedes the rotation modifier in the sequence.
The effect of a fill modifier depends on the character sequence it appears in. For example, when applied to a handshape character such as U+1D800 SIGNWRITING HAND-FIST INDEX, a fill modifier selects one of six possible fills representing as many palm orientations. When applied to a tempo symbol such as U+1D9F7 SIGNWRITING DYNAMIC FAST, a fill modifier alters the shape of the base character. When used in a character sequence such as <U+1D9FF SIGNWRITING HEAD, U+1DA16 SIGNWRITING EYES CLOSED, fill>, the fill modifier selects between one eye and both eyes closed.
The rotation modifiers turn a base character by 45 degree increments. In combination with handshape characters, the rotation modifiers also distinguish between the right and left hand characters. U+1DAA4 SIGNWRITING ROTATION MODIFIER-5 turns a base character by 180 degrees. For a handshape that distinguishes between right and left hand shapes, U+1DAAC SIGNWRITING ROTATION MODIFIER-13 turns the left hand shape 180 degrees.
#Punctuation. Sutton SignWriting uses five script-specific punctuation marks. These include U+1DA8B SIGNWRITING PARENTHESIS, which represents an opening parenthesis. A closing parenthesis is represented with the sequence <U+1DA8B SIGNWRITING PARENTHESIS, U+1DAA4 SIGNWRITING ROTATION MODIFIER-5>.