A spectre is haunting Unicode

Some meaningless Japanese characters (known as ghost characters) have been included in Unicode — and no-one knows why. Although there are some pretty good theories.

[S]everal of the added characters had no obvious sources, and nobody could tell what they meant or how they should be pronounced. Nobody was sure where they came from. These are what came to be known as the ghost characters (幽霊文字).

See also: Big tech warns of ‘Japan’s millennium bug’ ahead of Akihito’s abdication.

Duncan Stephen

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I lead teams and organisations to make human-centred decisions. I am a lead content designer and information architect at the Scottish Government.

Email — contact@duncanstephen.net

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