The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a

501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, Trust (business), trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of ...

non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View,

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, U.S. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the

Unicode Standard Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 cha ...

which was developed with the intention of replacing existing character encoding schemes that are limited in size and scope, and are incompatible with

multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

environments. Unicode's success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread adoption in the

internationalization and localization In computing, internationalization and localization (American English, American) or internationalisation and localisation (British English, British), often abbreviated i18n and l10n respectively, are means of adapting to different languages, regi ...

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

. The standard has been implemented in many technologies, including

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

, the

Java programming language Java is a high-level, general-purpose, memory-safe, object-oriented programming language. It is intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywhere'' ( WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Jav ...

Swift Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIF ...

, and modern

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s. Members are usually but not limited to computer software and hardware companies with an interest in text-processing standards, including

Adobe Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is use ...

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

, the Bangladesh Computer Council,

Emojipedia Emojipedia is an emoji reference website which documents the meaning and common usage of emoji characters in the Unicode Standard. Most commonly described as an emoji encyclopedia or emoji dictionary, Emojipedia also publishes articles and prov ...

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, the Omani Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs,

Monotype Imaging Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use wit ...

Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...

Salesforce Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, artificial intelligence, and ap ...

SAP SE Sap is a fluid transported in the xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a s ...

, Tamil Virtual Academy, and the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. Technical decisions relating to the

are made by the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC).

Founding

The project to develop a universal character encoding scheme called Unicode was initiated in 1987 by Joe Becker, Lee Collins, and Mark Davis. The Unicode Consortium was incorporated in

on January 3, 1991, with the stated aim to develop, extend, and promote the use of the

. Mark Davis was the president of the Unicode Consortium from when the Consortium was incorporated in 1991 until 2023, when he changed roles to CTO.

Work

The Unicode Consortium cooperates with many standards development organizations, including

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 Coded character sets is a standardization subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), that devel ...

and

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

. While Unicode is often considered equivalent to

ISO/IEC 10646 ISO/IEC JTC 1, entitled "Information technology", is a joint technical committee (JTC) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Its purpose is to develop, maintain and ...

, and the character sets are essentially identical, the Unicode standard imposes additional restrictions on implementations that ISO/IEC 10646 does not. Apart from ''The Unicode Standard'' (TUS) and its annexes (UAX), the Unicode Consortium also maintains the

CLDR The Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) is a project of the Unicode Consortium to provide locale data in XML format for use in computer applications. CLDR contains locale-specific information that an operating system will typically provide to ...

, collaborated with the IETF on IDNA, and publishes related standards (UTS), reports (UTR), and utilities. The group selects the

emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis; , ) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram, or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of modern emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from type ...

icons used by the world's smartphones, based on submissions from individuals and organizations who present their case with evidence for why each one is needed.

Unicode Technical Committee

The Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) meets quarterly to decide whether new characters will be encoded. A quorum of half of the Consortium's full members is required. As of May 2024, there are nine full members:

Airbnb Airbnb, Inc. ( , an abbreviation of its original name, "Air Bed and Breakfast") is an American company operating an online marketplace for short-and-long-term homestays, experiences and services in various countries and regions. It acts as a ...

, Meta,

and Translated. The UTC accepts documents from any organization or individual, whether they are members of the Unicode Consortium or not. The UTC holds its meetings behind closed doors. As of July 2020, the UTC rules on both emoji and script proposals at the same meeting. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on travel, the meetings, which used to be hosted on by various companies for free, were in 2020 held online via Zoom, although the discussions remain confidential. The UTC prefers to work by consensus, but on particularly contentious issues, votes may be necessary. After it meets, the UTC releases a public statement on each proposal it considered. Due to the volume of proposals, various subcommittees, such as the Script Ad Hoc Group and Emoji Subcommittee, exist to submit recommendations to the full UTC ''

en banc In law, an ''en banc'' (; alternatively ''in banc'', ''in banco'' or ''in bank''; ) session is when all the judges of a court sit to hear a case, not just one judge or a smaller panel of judges. For courts like the United States Courts of Appeal ...

''. The UTC is under no obligation to heed these recommendations, although in practice it usually does.

Publications

The Unicode Consortium maintains
History of Unicode Release and Publication Dates
Publications include: * * *

References

External links

* {{authority control

Consortium A consortium () is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations, or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a ...