Cataloger's Reference Shelf
MARC 21 Specifications for Record Structure, Character Sets, and Exchange
Media
Nonspacing Graphic Characters (Diacritics) (Character Sets, Part 1: MARC-8 Environment)
Nonspacing graphic characters are always used in conjunction with other spacing graphic characters. More than one nonspacing graphic character may be associated with one spacing graphic character. MARC 21 does not use the ASCII spacing equivalents of the ANSEL nonspacing graphic characters to encode diacritical marks associated with alphabetic characters. The nonspacing graphic characters that are used in conjunction with ASCII spacing graphic characters appear in the ANSEL character set in columns E-F (8-bit, G1 set).
In the Arabic character set, nonspacing characters appear in columns 4-7, and F (8-bit set).
In the Greek set, nonspacing characters appear in column 2.
In the Hebrew character set, nonspacing characters appear in column 4 (8-bit, G0 set).
In a character string, these nonspacing characters precede the character that they modify. When a graphic character requires multiple character modifiers, they are entered in the order in which they appear, reading left to right (or right to left with right-to-left scripts) and top to bottom.
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