Education and Unicode

The standards and data developed by the Unicode Consortium enable people around the world to use their languages on computers and mobile devices. These specifications provide a universal system for representing elements of language (called characters in Unicode) and the necessary data to describe how these characters function, from how to:

• form words and break lines
• sort text in different languages
• format numbers, dates, and times
• display languages whose written form flows from right to left, such as Arabic and Hebrew, or whose written form splits, combines, and reorders, such as languages of South Asia
• deal with security concerns regarding "look-alike" characters

The Consortium has information to make all these things function smoothly. With the Unicode Standard and its associated specifications, the breadth of the world's languages can be supported in modern software and applications, and the World Wide Web is truly worldwide.

The Unicode Consortium makes its standards and data freely available.

Learn more about the work of the Consortium. There are many ways to contribute and many resources available to those wishing to learn about the Unicode Standard and its associated open source projects. Students and educators will find both introductory information and in-depth articles and books on the use of Unicode and Unicode locale data. The Unicode Consortium also engages actively with universities, research institutions, consortia and standards bodies, and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The Consortium is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) charitable organization.