Unicode Consortium

Nonprofit organization that coordinates the development of the Unicode Standard

Unicode ConsortiumUnicode, Inc.

Formation| January 3, 1991; 34 years ago (1991-01-03)
Founders|

* Joe Becker
* Lee Collins
* Mark Davis

Founded at| California, US
Type| Non-profit consortium

Tax ID no.

| 77-0269756[1]
Legal status| 501(c)(3)[1] California nonprofit benefit corporation
Purpose| "To develop, extend and promote use of various standards, data, and open source software libraries which specify the representation of text in modern software[,] ... allowing data to be shared across multiple platforms, languages and countries without corruption"[2]
Location|

* Mountain View, California, US

Coordinates| 37°24′42″N 122°04′15″W﻿ / ﻿37.411759°N 122.070958°W﻿ / 37.411759; -122.070958

Key people

* Toral Cowieson (CEO)
* Mark Davis (CTO & Cofounder; CLDR-TC Chair)
* Anne Gundelfinger (Vice President and General Counsel)
* Greg Welch (Vice President of Marketing)
* Iris Orriss (Treasurer)
* Ayman Aldahleh (Secretary)[3]

Revenue| $467,576[2] (2018)
Expenses| $470,257[2] (2018)
Employees| 3[2] (2018)
Volunteers| 10[2] (2018)
Website| home.unicode.org

The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California, U.S.[4] Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intention of replacing existing character encoding schemes that are limited in size and scope, and are incompatible with multilingual environments.

Unicode's success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread adoption in the internationalization and localization of software.[5] The standard has been implemented in many technologies, including XML, the Java programming language, Swift, and modern operating systems.[6]

Members are usually but not limited to computer software and hardware companies with an interest in text-processing standards,[7] including Adobe, Apple, the Bangladesh Computer Council, Emojipedia, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, the Omani Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs, Monotype Imaging, Netflix, Salesforce, SAP SE, Tamil Virtual Academy, and the University of California, Berkeley.[8][9][10] Technical decisions relating to the Unicode Standard are made by the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC).[11]

## Founding

[edit]

For the history leading up to the Unicode Consortium's foundation, see Unicode § History.

The project to develop a universal character encoding scheme called Unicode was initiated in 1987 by Joe Becker, Lee Collins, and Mark Davis.[12][13] The Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on January 3, 1991,[14] with the stated aim to develop, extend, and promote the use of the Unicode Standard.[15] 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.[16]

## Work

[edit]

> Our goal is to make sure that all of the text on computers for every language in the world is represented but we get a lot more attention for emojis than for the fact that you can type Chinese on your phone and have it work with another phone.

— Unicode Consortium co-founder and CTO, Mark Davis[17]

Lisa Moore, vice president of the Unicode Consortium, presenting Choijinzhab and Nashunwuritu with copies of the Unicode Standard at a meeting of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, in 2017

The Unicode Consortium cooperates with many standards development organizations, including ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 and W3C.[18] While Unicode is often considered equivalent to ISO/IEC 10646, and the character sets are essentially identical, the Unicode standard imposes additional restrictions on implementations that ISO/IEC 10646 does not.[19] Apart from The Unicode Standard (TUS) and its annexes (UAX), the Unicode Consortium also maintains the CLDR, collaborated with the IETF on IDNA,[20][21] and publishes related standards (UTS), reports (UTR), and utilities.[22][23]

The group selects the emoji 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.[17]

### Unicode Technical Committee

[edit]

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.[24]

As of July 4, 2025, there are nine full members: Adobe, Airbnb, Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce and Translated.[25]

The UTC accepts documents from any organization or individual, whether they are members of the Unicode Consortium or not.[26][27] The UTC holds its meetings behind closed doors.[28] 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,[29] although the discussions remain confidential.

The UTC prefers to work by consensus, but on particularly contentious issues, votes may be necessary.[30]: §9 After it meets, the UTC releases a public statement on each proposal it considered.[24] 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.[31][27] The UTC is under no obligation to heed these recommendations,[30]: §1.7 although in practice it usually does.

## Publications

[edit]

The Unicode Consortium maintains a History of Unicode Release and Publication Dates.

Publications include:

* The Unicode Standard, Version 12.0. Web publication. March 2019. ISBN 978-1-936213-22-1.
* The Unicode Standard, Version 5.0 (5th ed.). Addison-Wesley. October 2006. ISBN 978-0-321-48091-0.
* The Unicode Standard, Version 4.0. Addison-Wesley. August 2003. ISBN 978-0-321-18578-5.

## See also

[edit]

* Comparison of Unicode encodings
* Universal Character Set characters
* Universal Coded Character Set

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b "Tax Exempt Organization Search". Internal Revenue Service. September 6, 2019. Archived from the original on August 9, 2020. Retrieved February 5, 2020.
2. ^ a b c d e "Form 990: Return of Organization Exempt from Tax Archived February 5, 2020, at the Wayback Machine". Unicode, Inc. Internal Revenue Service. December 31, 2018.
3. ^ "Unicode Executive Officers". Unicode Consortium. Retrieved February 2, 2023.
4. ^ Wong, Queenie (February 12, 2016). "Q&A: Mark Davis, president of the Unicode Consortium, on the rise of emojis". The Mercury News. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
5. ^ "How will you type the new Rupee symbol?". IBNLive. July 15, 2010. Archived from the original on July 18, 2010.
6. ^ "Strings and Characters". The Swift Programming Language (Swift 4.1). Apple. Retrieved April 25, 2018.
7. ^ Sugar, Rachel (October 16, 2018). "Tacos, dumplings, bagels: the complicated politics of food emoji". Vox. Archived from the original on May 9, 2025. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
8. ^ "The Unicode Consortium Members". Unicode, Inc. Retrieved October 23, 2021.
9. ^ Unicode, Inc. (September 15, 2015). "Facebook Joins as Full Member of the Unicode Consortium". The Unicode Blog. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
10. ^ Pelletiere, Nicole (October 25, 2018). "Emoji contenders for 2019 include mixed-race couples, a sloth and wheelchairs". ABC News. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
11. ^ McGowan, R. (February 2004). "A Summary of Unicode Consortium Procedures, Policies, Stability, and Public Access". tools.ietf.org. doi:10.17487/RFC3718. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
12. ^ "History of Unicode : Summary Narrative". Unicode Consortium. Retrieved April 25, 2018.
13. ^ Yau, John (July 17, 2016). "Better Days". Hyperallergic. Retrieved November 29, 2018.
14. ^ Roy, Jessica (August 3, 2016). "Apple is replacing the pistol emoji with a squirt gun". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 29, 2018.
15. ^ "Unicode History Corner". Unicode, Inc. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
16. ^ "New Unicode Consortium CEO". Unicode Consortium. Retrieved February 2, 2023.
17. ^ a b NPR Staff (October 25, 2015). "Who Decides Which Emojis Get The Thumbs Up?". NPR. Retrieved February 10, 2019.
18. ^ "UNICODE - The Unicode Consortium". International Standards Organization. Retrieved July 11, 2020.
19. ^ Korpela, Jukka K. (June 21, 2006). Unicode Explained. O'Reilly Media, Inc. ISBN 978-0-596-10121-3.
20. ^ Sikos, Leslie (December 29, 2014). Web Standards: Mastering HTML5, CSS3, and XML. Apress. ISBN 978-1-4842-0883-0.
21. ^ Kühne, Mirjam (May 7, 2007). "Plenary Report". IETF Journal. Internet Engineering Task Force. Retrieved July 11, 2020.
22. ^ "Unicode Technical Reports". Unicode, Inc.
23. ^ "Unicode Utilities: Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)". Unicode, Inc.
24. ^ a b "Approved Minutes of UTC Meeting 160". Unicode Consortium. October 7, 2019. L2/19-270. Retrieved July 11, 2020.
25. ^ "Members - Unicode". Unicode Consortium. July 8, 2024. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
26. ^ "Submitting Character Proposals". Unicode Consortium. April 1, 2016. Retrieved July 11, 2020.
27. ^ a b Berard, Bethany (September 1, 2018). "I second that emoji: The standards, structures, and social production of emoji". First Monday. doi:10.5210/fm.v23i9.9381. ISSN 1396-0466. S2CID 52157507.
28. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: de Jong, Mea Dols (May 4, 2020). Beyond the emoji (YouTube video). Deutsche Welle.
29. ^ "UTC Meeting Information and Minutes". Unicode Consortium. April 24, 2020. Retrieved July 11, 2020. "Note: During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic crisis, until further notice, all Unicode Technical Committee meetings are held via video conference. Details for joining the meeting hosted on the Unicode Zoom account are listed on the logistics page for each meeting."
30. ^ a b "Technical Committee Procedures for the Unicode Consortium". Unicode Consortium. January 23, 2019. Retrieved July 11, 2020.
31. ^ "Script Ad Hoc Group". Unicode Consortium. Retrieved July 11, 2020.

## External links

[edit]

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Unicode/Character_reference

* Official website

* v
* t
* e

Unicode

Unicode|

* Unicode Consortium
* ISO/IEC 10646 (Universal Character Set)
* Versions

Code points|

* Block
* List
* Universal Character Set
* Character charts
* Character property
* Plane
* Private Use Area

Characters|

| Special purpose|

* BOM
* Combining grapheme joiner
* Left-to-right mark / Right-to-left mark
* Soft hyphen
* Variant form
* Word joiner
* Zero-width joiner
* Zero-width non-joiner
* Zero-width space

|

Lists|

* Characters
* CJK Unified Ideographs
* Combining character
* Duplicate characters
* Numerals
* Scripts
* Spaces
* Symbols
* Halfwidth and fullwidth
* Alias names and abbreviations
* Whitespace characters

Processing|

| Algorithms|

* Bidirectional text
* Collation
* ISO/IEC 14651
* Equivalence
* Variation sequences
* International Ideographs Core

|

Comparison of encodings|

* BOCU-1
* CESU-8
* Punycode
* SCSU
* UTF-1
* UTF-7
* UTF-8
* UTF-16/UCS-2
* UTF-32/UCS-4
* UTF-EBCDIC

On pairs of
code points|

* Combining character
* Compatibility characters
* Duplicate characters
* Equivalence
* Homoglyph
* Precomposed character
* list
* Z-variant
* Variation sequences
* Regional indicator symbol
* Emoji skin color

Usage|

* Domain names (IDN)
* Email
* Fonts
* HTML
* entity references
* numeric references
* Input
* International Ideographs Core

Related standards|

* Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR)
* GB 18030
* ISO/IEC 8859
* DIN 91379
* ISO 15924

Related topics|

* Anomalies
* ConScript Unicode Registry
* Ideographic Research Group
* International Components for Unicode
* People involved with Unicode
* Han unification

Scripts and symbols in Unicode

Common and
inherited scripts|

* Combining marks
* Diacritics
* Punctuation marks
* Spaces
* Numbers

Modern scripts|

* Adlam
* Arabic
* Armenian
* Balinese
* Bamum
* Batak
* Bengali
* Bopomofo
* Braille
* Buhid
* Burmese
* Canadian Aboriginal
* Chakma
* Cham
* Cherokee
* CJK Unified Ideographs (Han)
* Cyrillic
* Deseret
* Devanagari
* Garay
* Geʽez
* Georgian
* Greek
* Gujarati
* Gunjala Gondi
* Gurmukhi
* Gurung Khema
* Hangul
* Hanifi Rohingya
* Hanja
* Hanunuoo
* Hebrew
* Hiragana
* Javanese
* Kanji
* Kannada
* Katakana
* Kayah Li
* Khmer
* Kirat Rai
* Lao
* Latin
* Lepcha
* Limbu
* Lisu (Fraser)
* Lontara
* Malayalam
* Masaram Gondi
* Mende Kikakui
* Medefaidrin
* Miao (Pollard)
* Mongolian
* Mru
* N'Ko
* Nag Mundari
* New Tai Lue
* Nüshu
* Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong
* Odia
* Ol Chiki
* Ol Onal
* Osage
* Osmanya
* Pahawh Hmong
* Pau Cin Hau
* Pracalit (Newa)
* Ranjana
* Rejang
* Samaritan
* Saurashtra
* Shavian
* Sinhala
* Sorang Sompeng
* Sundanese
* Sunuwar
* Syriac
* Tagbanwa
* Tai Le
* Tai Tham
* Tai Viet
* Tamil
* Tangsa
* Telugu
* Thaana
* Thai
* Tibetan
* Tifinagh
* Tirhuta
* Toto
* Vai
* Wancho
* Warang Citi
* Yi

Ancient and
historic scripts|

* Ahom
* Anatolian hieroglyphs
* Ancient North Arabian
* Avestan
* Bassa Vah
* Bhaiksuki
* Brāhmī
* Carian
* Caucasian Albanian
* Coptic
* Cuneiform
* Cypriot
* Cypro-Minoan
* Dives Akuru
* Dogra
* Egyptian hieroglyphs
* Elbasan
* Elymaic
* Glagolitic
* Gothic
* Grantha
* Hatran
* Imperial Aramaic
* Inscriptional Pahlavi
* Inscriptional Parthian
* Kaithi
* Kawi
* Kharosthi
* Khitan small script
* Khojki
* Khudawadi
* Khwarezmian (Chorasmian)
* Linear A
* Linear B
* Lycian
* Lydian
* Mahajani
* Makasar
* Mandaic
* Manichaean
* Marchen
* Meetei Mayek
* Meroitic
* Modi
* Multani
* Nabataean
* Nandinagari
* Ogham
* Old Hungarian
* Old Italic
* Old Permic
* Old Persian cuneiform
* Old Sogdian
* Old Turkic
* Old Uyghur
* Palmyrene
* ʼPhags-pa
* Phoenician
* Psalter Pahlavi
* Runic
* Sharada
* Siddham
* Sogdian
* South Arabian
* Soyombo
* Sylheti Nagri
* Tagalog (Baybayin)
* Takri
* Tangut
* Todhri
* Tulu Tigalari
* Ugaritic
* Vithkuqi
* Yezidi
* Zanabazar Square

Notational scripts|

* Duployan
* SignWriting

Symbols, emojis|

* Cultural, political, and religious symbols
* Currency
* Control Pictures
* Mathematical operators and symbols
* Glossary
* Phonetic symbols (including IPA)
* Emoji

* Category: Unicode
* Category: Unicode blocks

* v
* t
* e

Emoji

Unicode background|

* Single emojis in Unicode
* Blocks
* Dingbats
* Emoticons
* Miscellaneous Symbols
* Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs
* Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs
* Transport and Map Symbols
* Regional indicator symbol
* Implementation
* Unicode Consortium

Related people|

* Harvey Ball
* Jeremy Burge
* Mark Davis
* Michael Everson
* Shigetaka Kurita
* Josh Gare

Typefaces|

* Apple Color
* Blob
* Noto
* Segoe UI

Notable emoji|

* Eggplant (🍆)
* Face with Tears of Joy (😂)
* Man in Business Suit Levitating (🕴)
* Peach (🍑)
* Person with Headscarf (🧕)
* Pineapple (🍍)
* Poop (💩)
* Pistol (🔫)
* Skull (💀)
* Sparkles (✨)
* Hearts in Unicode (❤️)

Cultural influence|

* Emogenius
* Emoji domain
* The Emoji Movie
* Emojipedia
* Emojli
* EmojiGrid
* Gaysper
* Smile (Doctor Who)
* World Emoji Day

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF

National|

* Germany
* United States
* Australia
* Norway
* Israel

Academics|

* CiNii

People|

* Trove

Other|

* IdRef
* Yale LUX

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template