Alphabetic

Alphabetic is a binary character classification that identifies letters and letter-like symbols used in writing systems, including those with inherent numeric values, such as Roman numerals, and special script characters like the modifier letters used in phonetic transcription. It encompasses all characters with the general category of Letter (Lu, Ll, Lt, Lm, Lo) as well as certain combining marks, such as the Nonspacing and Spacing Combining marks, when they are used to form alphabetic sequences. This definition excludes digits, punctuation, and symbols, even if they resemble letters. The classification is derived from the Unicode character database and serves as a core input for text processing tasks like word segmentation, spell checking, and case conversion, ensuring that scripts from all languages, including non-Latin ones like Arabic, Devanagari, and Ethiopic, are handled uniformly based on their alphabetic function rather than visual form.