Latinonly

Latinonly is a term used in discussions of software design, typography, and data management to describe a constraint that restricts content to the Latin script. In practice, it often refers to allowing only Latin letters, digits, and punctuation, sometimes with limited diacritic marks, and to systems that store or display text using a Latin-only character repertoire.

Its scope can vary: in input validation, a Latinonly policy may reject characters from non-Latin scripts such as Cyrillic, Arabic, or Chinese; in storage, databases and APIs may be configured to use a Latin-based collation; in rendering, fonts and shaping systems may only include Latin glyphs.

Latinonly policies are encountered in legacy systems, multilingual forms with restricted fields, or environments where interoperability with older software is a priority. Some projects explicitly label a field as Latinonly to communicate the constraint to users and developers.

While Latinonly can simplify processing, indexing, and cross-system compatibility, it also limits language support, hinders user accessibility for non-Latin speakers, and risks data loss or misinterpretation when non-Latin data is inadvertently rejected. Proponents argue for clear requirements and graceful degradation, while critics emphasize inclusive design.

See also Unicode, Latin script, Internationalization, Character encoding.