CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

Basic Concepts and Terminology FAQ

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Latin Versus Roman Characters

To this day, many people debate whether the 26 letters of the English alphabet should be

referred to as Roman or Latin characters. While some standards, such as those published

by ISO, prefer the term Latin, other standards prefer the term Roman. In this book, I

prefer to use Latin over Roman, and use it consistently, but readers are advised that they

should treat both terms synonymously.

When speaking of typeface designs, the use of the term Roman is used in contrast with the

term italic, and refers to the upright or nonitalic letterforms.

What Is a Diacritic Mark?

A diacritic mark is an attachment to a character that typically serves as an accent, or in-

dicates tone or other linguistic information. Diacritic marks are important in the scope

of this book, because many transliteration and Romanization systems make use of them.

Japanese long vowels, for example, are indicated through the use of the diacritic mark

called a macron. Vietnamese makes extensive use of multiple diacritic marks, meaning

that some characters can include more than one diacritic mark. Many non-Latin scripts,

such as Japanese hiragana and katakana, also use diacritic marks. In the case of Japanese

kana, one such diacritic mark serves to indicate the voicing of consonants.

What Is Notation?

e term notation refers to a method of representing ...