erikoismerkki

Erikoismerkki (Finnish: special character) is a term used in computing and typography to denote any character that is not a letter or a digit. It includes punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, currency signs, symbols used for programming, and other non-alphanumeric glyphs. In practice, erikoismerkit generally encompass characters such as @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, (, ), -, _, +, =, {, }, [, ], |, \, :, ;, ', ", ,, ., ?, /, as well as many other Unicode symbols and emoji.

In everyday use, erikoismerkki is important in contexts such as password requirements (erikoismerkkejä are often required), form validation, or data encoding. The set of accepted erikoismerkit can vary by system, language, or policy.

From a technical perspective, erikoismerkki characters are represented in text using character encodings such as Unicode. In older systems, ASCII covers only a small subset of erikoismerkki (the 33-47, 58-64, 91-96, 123-126 ranges). Modern software typically uses Unicode to support a broad set of symbols. Some fonts or input methods may require specific keyboard layouts to access certain erikoismerkki.

A distinction is sometimes made between erikoismerkki and diacritic marks on letters (such as ä or ö): diacritics modify a letter rather than constituting a separate non-letter symbol, though in practice many diacritics appear as erikoismerkki characters when isolated.