to represent the /l/ phoneme that didn't exist in the Avestan language. Ligatures Four ligatures are commonly used in Avestan manuscripts: (š) + (a) = (ša) (š) + (c) = (šc) (š) + (t) = (št) (a) + (h) = (ah) U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER can be used to prevent ligatures if desired. For example, compare (U+10B31 10B00) with (U+10B31 200C 10B00). Fossey lists 16 ligatures, but most are formed by the interaction of swash tails. Digits Digits and numbers can be seen on the Faulmann chart above. Punctuation Words and the end of the first part of a compound are separated by a dot (in a variety of vertical positions). Beyond that, punctuation is weak or non-existent in the manuscripts, and in the 1880s Karl Friedrich Geldner had to devise one for standardized transcription. In his system, which he developed based on what he could find, a triangle of three dots serves as a colon, a semicolon, an end of sentence or end of section; which is determined by the size of the dots and whether there is one dot above and two below, or two above and one below. Two above and one below signify — in ascending order of "dot" size — colon, semicolon, end of sentence or end of section. Unicode The Avestan alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2009 with the release of version 5.2. The characters are encoded at U+10B00—10B35 for letters (ii and uu are not represented as single characters, but as sequences of characters) and U+10B38—10B3F for punctuation. References External links On Wikipedia, the above Avestan alphabet samples are more likely than not displayed in most Web browsers using Google's Noto Sans Avestan font, which has four automated ligatures. A more complete, serif-style font, with full ligatures and more sophisticated kerning hints, is available below: Ernst Tremel's Open Font Licensed Ahura Mazda Unicode font, based on the type used in Geldner 1896, with the addition of ligatures in the PUA. Bibliography . . . . . . Alphabets Avesta Alphabet Scripts with ISO 15924 four-letter codes Persian scripts Obsolete writing systems Right-to-left writing systems