Scope note

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This class comprises symbols used as kinds of atomic units with distinctive value in a given writing system in order to represent linguistic units of some level to encode elements of a message. According to the typology of the writing system, the represented linguistic units can be phonemes (as in Latin), syllables (as in Mycenaean Linear B), up to complete words (as in Chinese and Sumerian scripts).

A writing system also provides the conventions determining how the graphemes are to be used to write a language (orthographic rules).

In some writing systems, graphemes may also be used as auxiliary signs, for instance, for disambiguating senses of homonyms, as in the Japanese writing system, or to mark the semantic categories of the words, as in the ancient Egyptian determinatives.

Language

en