Unicode Demystified

Ruby

Even native speakers of the languages that use the Han characters don't know all of them. Consequently, in East Asian typography (especially Japanese), annotation techniques are often used to help readers deal with unfamiliar characters. The most common of these techniques is something called interlinear annotation or, in Japanese, ruby or furigana.^[22]

^[22] Ken Lunde, the Japanese text-processing expert whose book provided much of the information in this chapter, has a daughter named Ruby, which somehow seems quite appropriate.

With this approach, you adorn a character with one or more smaller characters that clarify its meaning or, more commonly, its pronunciation. In Japanese, you might see an unusual kanji character adorned with a few ...