multiscript

Multiscript is a term used to describe the use of more than one writing system within a single language, document, or typographic workflow. It encompasses linguistic phenomena where a language is written in multiple scripts, as well as technical practices that enable rendering and editing of texts that combine scripts in digital and print media. In typography, multiscript support means fonts, input methods, and rendering engines can display, format, and process content that switches among scripts with correct shaping, kerning, directionality, and line layout.

In linguistic contexts, examples include Serbo-Croatian, which historically used both Latin and Cyrillic scripts; Punjabi, written in Gurmukhi or Shahmukhi; and Japanese, which uses Kanji together with Hiragana and Katakana and may include Latin letters in mixed-script contexts. Other languages such as Persian, Urdu, and Kurdish use Arabic-based scripts alongside Latin representations. In digital environments, multiscript support is essential for multilingual websites, e-books, and software interfaces.

Technically, multiscript relies on Unicode for encoding, script tags and language metadata, and font technologies such as OpenType to provide glyph shaping and metrics appropriate to each script. The bidirectional algorithm handles mixing right-to-left and left-to-right scripts. Rendering pipelines must select suitable fonts, manage line breaking, punctuation, and numerals for each script, and maintain readable and culturally appropriate typography.

Challenges include ensuring consistent metrics across scripts, accurate line height, punctuation and decimal marks, search and indexing across scripts, input methods, and data normalization. Interoperability across platforms and fonts can also affect how reliably multiscript text is presented. See also Unicode, OpenType, multilingual typography, and script (writing system).