Typesetting for Today's Alphabets

As each language in the world is unique, so is its alphabet. Choosing what characters to use in a language's alphabet can be a complicated process.

In many areas around the world where SIL linguists work, the national languages use the Roman alphabet. Linguists then use Roman characters to form alphabets. However, often the Roman characters alone cannot adequately represent the unique sounds of a language. Diacritics (marks added to letters to change their pronunciation) can then be used to expand the number of sounds that can be written. They are also used to mark tone or stress.

In other areas, the major languages use non-Roman alphabets that are very old. The people treasure their way of writing. However, there has been no way of typesetting them for the minority languages. Now SIL computer specialists are designing typography for these scripts.

In the southern Philippines, many speakers of minority languages use the Arabic alphabet. But some of their characters differ slightly from those used in the Middle East and North Africa. To address this, SIL technicians are developing a computer program that adapts the Arabic alphabet to these minority languages.

SIL is now able to prepare camera-ready copy in the following alphabets: Arabic, Devanagari, Ethiopic, Greek, Laotian, Tai Dam, and Roman with numerous diacritics.

Research and development continue adapting new and ancient alphabets to printing technology. It's all part of the process of being alphabet makers.