## Text Encoding Initiative

### The XML Version of the TEI Guidelines

# <characters>

`<characters>` | contains a specification of the characters used in a particular writing system to write a particular language, and of how those characters are represented in electronic form.
Attributes | Global attributes only

Example

    <writingSystemDeclaration date='1993-06-01'
                              name='-//TEI P2: 1993//WSD ISO 8859-1//en'>
       <language iso639=''>various</language>
       <direction chars="LR" lines="TB"/>
       <characters>
           <codedCharSet name="ISO 8859-1: 1992" authority="ISO"/>
           <exceptions>
               <!-- ... -->
           </exceptions>
       </characters>
    </writingSystemDeclaration>

Module | Declared in file teiwsd2; Auxiliary tag set for Writing System Declarations
Data Description | May contain a series of base components (coded character sets, writing system declarations, and entity sets) followed by a set of exceptions to define differences from the base components.
May contain | baseWsd codedCharSet entitySet exceptions
May occur within |

Declaration

    <!ELEMENT characters %om.RO;  ( codedCharSet*, baseWsd*,
                                    entitySet*, exceptions? ) >
    <!ATTLIST characters
          %a.global;>

See further | 25.4.1 Base Components of the WSD; 25.1 Overall Structure of Writing System Declaration

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