Unicode
Also known as: Unicode standard, Unicode encoding
Unicode is an international standard that assigns a unique number to nearly every character in the world's writing systems, from English and French letters to Chinese characters, Arabic script, Indigenous syllabics, mathematical symbols, and emoji.
It lets text be stored and shared reliably across devices, apps, and languages. UTF-8, the most common way to encode Unicode, is used by the vast majority of websites. While Unicode mostly works invisibly, mismatches still cause garbled text, the familiar 'é' where an 'é' should be.
Unicode, explained at three levels
At home
Unicode is like a universal dictionary that gives every letter and emoji its own ID number. Every device looks up the same number and shows the same character.
At work
Unicode lets business systems handle customer names and addresses in any language, including accented French names.
At home
New emoji arrive in yearly Unicode updates, but you only see them after your phone's software adds support. That's why a friend's new emoji might show up as a box.
At work
Use UTF-8 everywhere: databases, files, APIs, and web pages. Encoding mismatches cause garbled names, failed searches, and data import errors.
At home
Scammers use look-alike Unicode characters to create fake web addresses, such as a Cyrillic 'а' instead of a Latin 'a.' In my opinion, typing important addresses yourself is the safest habit.
At work
Normalize text before comparing or storing it, test with accented and non-Latin names, watch for homoglyph spoofing in domains and usernames, and handle emoji in fields with length limits.
Real-world examples
At home
Fatima's last name has an accent. An old website kept showing it as random symbols, a classic Unicode encoding mismatch.
At work
Jerome manages a Nunavut government records system. Upgrading to full UTF-8 support let staff correctly store names written in Inuktitut syllabics.
How it compares
| feature | Unicode | ASCII |
|---|---|---|
| Characters supported | Nearly 160,000 | 128 |
| Languages | Nearly all writing systems | Basic English |
| Emoji | Yes | No |
| Compatibility | UTF-8 includes ASCII | Older systems |
ASCII covers basic English. Unicode covers the world.
For analysts
For bilingual and Indigenous-language services in Canada, I'd make full Unicode support a requirement. Names displayed wrong damage trust immediately.
History & origin
Before Unicode, computers used hundreds of conflicting character sets, so text often became gibberish when moved between systems or languages. Engineers Joe Becker, Lee Collins, and Mark Davis began work on a universal character set in 1987, the Unicode Consortium formed in 1991, and Unicode 1.0 was published that year. Ken Thompson and Rob Pike designed UTF-8 in 1992, reportedly sketching it on a diner placemat in New Jersey. Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, used for languages such as Inuktitut and Cree, were added in 1999. Emoji joined Unicode in 2010, and Unicode 17.0 in 2025 brought the total to nearly 160,000 characters. In my view, Unicode is one of the great achievements of global cooperation in technology.