caracter

Caracter is a term used across languages to denote a symbol used in a writing system. It generally refers to a single element that can be printed or displayed, such as a letter, a digit, punctuation mark, or other sign. In computing, a caracter is a discrete unit of information that a program can store, process, or transmit, typically represented by a code point in an encoding such as Unicode.

Etymology: The word derives from Latin characterem, from Greek kharaktēr. It appears in Romance languages with related forms, for example carácter in Spanish and carattere in Italian, with diacritical marks marking differences in pronunciation and meaning.

Character encodings: Historically, ASCII encoded 128 characters; Unicode aims to cover the full repertoire of human scripts. A code point identifies a character, while a grapheme is the smallest unit of a writing system as perceived by users. Normalization handles combinations of base characters and diacritics.

Applications: In linguistics and typography, a character can refer to an abstract unit or its visible glyph. In literature, a character is a person appearing in a story, with traits and development. In computer user interfaces, characters are the elements users type or display.

In some languages such as Spanish or Portuguese, carácter denotes a person’s moral character or temperament, with common expressions such as tener buen carácter or carácter fuerte. The term thus covers linguistic, typographic, computing, literary, and social senses.