Unicode Explained

splits a paragraph into lines, separated with CR LF, according to the current visual

rendering (which depends on the window width). This is usually much more digestible

to an editor. It may imply that information about paragraph breaks is lost, though.

Mathematical and Technical Symbols

There is a large and growing amount of characters that are used as special symbols in

mathematical and technical texts, often in highly specialized meaning and context. The

use of mathematical notations is increasingly common even in social sciences and hu-

manities. Rules for usage are generally well established, though with some typographic

and other variation. See, for example, the extensive international standard ISO 31‑11,

“Quantities and Units. Part 11: Mathematical signs and symbols for use in the physical

sciences and technology.” The MathWorld web site http://mathworld.wolfram.com il-

lustrates and explains the conventional mathematical notations.

In Unicode, digits and other numeric symbols appear in different script-specific blocks,

including Basic Latin, of course. There are also some very commonly used mathematical

operators and other symbols in blocks like Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, and Gen-

eral Punctuation. In addition to these, there are several blocks for mathematical and

technical symbols, allocated in a rather confusing way for historical reasons. An over-

view of this situation is given ...