CODEWITHSUNDEEP
unicode
George Mauer
George Mauer

Reputation: 122072

Is it possible to use unicode combining characters to combine arbitrary characters?

Is it possible to use unicode combining characters to for example make the characters x and y appear to be partially overlapping each other?

I know that in layout systems like CSS there are other ways to achieve this, but I specifically want to know if its possible with just unicode so I can for example do it in Slack messages.

Upvotes: 10

Views: 2170

Answers (1)

CharlotteBuff
CharlotteBuff

Reputation: 4409

No, there is no Unicode mechanism to make arbitrary letters overlap each other. You can put an x above a y using the character U+036F COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER X like so: yͯ, but that’s about it.

Latin letters partially overlapping each other serves no semantic function, so it is not part of the Unicode standard. And if it was found to be used to convey actual meaning in some writing system, it would most likely not be encoded as a generalised mechanism but as individual characters representing specific such ligatures.

The Unicode Consortium does not consider styling features like that to be part of plain text. That is also why those bold and italic mathematical letters you sometimes see on Twitter (𝐀, 𝐴, 𝓐 etc.) aren’t implemented as the base letters plus some style modifiers, but as separate character codes entirely. A character that means “display the preceding letter as bold” would have been too general; non-crucial style variation should be dealt with through higher-level protocols (like the CSS you mentioned) which are much more powerful and enjoy more widespread support anyway.

Upvotes: 10

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