What is the purpose of Unicode in computing?

Unicode serves the essential purpose of allowing the use of special characters and facilitating the representation of text from multiple languages and scripts within computing systems. By providing a standardized encoding system, Unicode ensures that characters from various languages—such as Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, and many others—can be consistently represented and displayed across different platforms and devices. This standardization is crucial in promoting multilingual computing, enabling users to communicate and access information in their preferred languages without ambiguity or misinterpretation of characters.

While reducing storage capacity, improving processing speed, and enhancing computing memory are important aspects of computing, they are not the primary functions of Unicode. Instead, the focus of Unicode is to provide a comprehensive character set that meets the diverse needs of global communication within technology. This capability significantly broadens the reach and usability of software applications and systems in a variety of linguistic environments.