yooˈnĭkōdˌ, set of codes used to represent letters, numbers, control characters, and the like, designed for use internationally in computers. Adopted as an international standard in 1992, it is intended to replace ASCII as the primary alphanumeric character set. Unicode is a "double-byte," or 16-digit, binary number (see numeration ) code that can represent up to 65,536 items. The Unicode standard defines codes for letters, special characters, and other linguistic symbols used in every major language written today. It includes the Latin alphabet used for English, the Cyrillic alphabet used for Russian, the Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabets, and other alphabets and alphabetlike writing systems used in countries across Europe, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and Asia, such as Japanese kana, Korean hangeul, and Chinese bopomofo. The largest part of the Unicode standard is devoted to thousands of unified character codes for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ideographs.

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