Version 1.0, 23 August 2021
Version history:
Version 1.0, 23 August 2021
Old Turkic script
The Old Turkic script (also known as Orkhon script, Göktürk script, Orkhon-Yenisei script or Turkic runes) was used for writing Turkic languages in Mongolia and Siberia from the 8th to the 13th centuries. The name ‘Orkhon script’ refers to the banks of the Orkhon river in Mongolia, the location where the earliest examples of writing in any Turkic language were found. Following this discovery, other examples were found, written in variant forms of the script. Therefore, the term ‘Orkhon’ is sometimes used in a collective sense to refer to the Old Turkic scripts as a whole. Other writings styles are, then, considered variant forms of Orkhon script. The Orkhon style as such is sometimes grouped with the Yenisei style and the pair referred to as ‘Orkhon-Yenisei’.
The Old Turkic script should not be confused with either the Germanic runic script (fuþark), or with the Old Hungarian Rovásírás script.
(Note that the Old Turkic script includes one ligature; see the Unicode Standard 13.0, chapter 14.8 South and Central Asia-III, page 594 for the correct encoding.)
Writing direction
Orkhon writing was generally written right to left. Occasionally it was written in boustrophedon style, in which case the individual letter shapes were reversed on alternate lines.
Font sizes
The font Noto Sans Old Turkic can be downloaded freely from the Google Noto Fonts site, searching for ‘Noto Sans Old Turkic’.
- Brill 11 pt ~ Noto Sans Old Turkic 9.5 pt
- Brill 10 pt ~ Noto Sans Old Turkic 8.5 pt
- Brill 9 pt ~ Noto Sans Old Turkic 8 pt
- Brill 16 pt (chapter titles) ~ Noto Sans Old Turkic 14.5 pt
Typesetting software
At the time of writing (August 2021), InDesign does not support typesetting Old Turkic script: the script is not recognized as a right-to-left script and therefore, Old Turkic text becomes corrupt when rendered in InDesign (both in the native Adobe text renderer Lipika and InDesign’s version of HarfBuzz). Only TeX can be tweaked to render Old Turkic script correctly, and therefore, Old Turkic text can and must only be typeset by TAT, who use an installation of LuaTeX. In case of Old Turkic text in boustrophedon style, explicitly notify the typesetter of this.
Web fonts
Noto Sans Old Turkic. See Web Fonts and Script Proportions on Brill Websites 020 for font license and font rights holder.
Language tags: otk (Old Turkish [IANA description]) and oui (Old Uyghur). Script tag: Orkh. At this time of writing (August 2021), only use the language-script tags otk-Orkh.
Windows and macOS
Windows fonts, as long as they are TrueType fonts (.ttf) or TrueType Collections (.ttc) can also be used on macOS.
