What Script Does Turkish Use?

What Script Does Turkish Use?

Turkish is written in the Latin script, but with its own unique set of letters: ç, ğ, ı, İ, ö, ş, and ü. These characters may look familiar, but they behave differently in text processing, design, and software localization. For companies working with Turkish content, it’s important to understand how these characters affect fonts, subtitling, desktop publishing, and transcription.

1. Fonts That Support Turkish

One of the most common pitfalls in Turkish localization is choosing fonts that do not fully support Turkish diacritics. Missing or incorrectly rendered characters can make text unreadable, change meaning, or look unprofessional. The biggest risks are the dotted and dotless “i” (İ vs. I vs. ı), which often break in poorly designed fonts.

Safe and widely used fonts that support Turkish include:

• Arial – A universal fallback font that supports all Turkish characters; reliable for both web and print.
• Times New Roman – A serif option that handles Turkish diacritics correctly, commonly used in official documents.
• Calibri – Standard in Microsoft products, widely used in corporate communication.
• Verdana – Designed for screen readability, handles Turkish well in digital interfaces.
• Open Sans – A modern web font, highly legible and popular for websites with Turkish audiences.
• Roboto – Another web-safe font, widely used in mobile apps, fully supports Turkish characters.
• Source Sans Pro – Adobe’s open-source font, clean and reliable for multilingual publishing.

Fonts that sometimes cause issues with Turkish include older decorative fonts or custom brand fonts that haven’t been designed with extended Latin sets. Before rolling out Turkish content, always test your font with a full sample sentence that contains every special character.

Turkish test sentence (contains all unique characters):

“İstanbul’da çiçekler açıyor, çocuklar gülüyor; şoför, üzüm ve yağmur hoş görünüyor.”

This sentence includes: ç, ğ, ı, İ, ö, ş, and ü. If any of these display incorrectly, your font choice isn’t ready for Turkish localization.

2. Quick Fact: What is Cyrillic?

Fun fact: Before 1928, Turkish was written in the Arabic script. Atatürk’s reforms introduced the Latin alphabet, making Turkish easier to read and more accessible in education. Some related Turkic languages (like Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uzbek) were written in Cyrillic during the Soviet era, which is why Turkish is sometimes mistakenly associated with Cyrillic.

3. Turkish in Subtitling

Turkish subtitling requires careful handling of word length and reading speed. Since words can become long due to suffixes, subtitles often expand beyond the usual 35–40 character-per-line standard. Subtitlers must adjust line breaks without splitting words unnaturally and ensure the timing matches natural Turkish reading speed.

Another subtitling challenge is tone. Turkish suffixes encode levels of politeness and respect, and mistranslating these in subtitles can make dialogue feel too blunt or overly formal. Skilled subtitle translators adjust for cultural expectations while maintaining the original meaning.

4. Turkish Desktop Publishing (DTP)

In brochures, manuals, product packaging, and marketing collateral, Turkish text often takes up more space than English. Designers must allow for 20–30% text expansion, especially in tight layouts. Fonts with poor kerning or incomplete Turkish support can cause broken accents, misplaced dots, or spacing errors.

Professional DTP tools such as Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop support Turkish well, but only if paired with fonts designed for extended Latin scripts. Automated hyphenation must also be checked carefully — improper word breaks can look unnatural or change meaning in Turkish.

For print projects, always proof with native Turkish linguists who can catch issues like incorrect ligatures, missing diacritics, or formatting errors in dates and numbers (e.g., commas used instead of decimal points). Learn more about our desktop publishing services.

5. Turkish Transcription

Another area where the Turkish script matters is transcription — converting spoken Turkish audio or video into written text. This is widely used for interviews, research, court recordings, e-learning, and corporate meetings.

Because Turkish spelling closely follows pronunciation, transcription is generally straightforward compared to English. However, challenges include:

• Correctly representing polite vs. informal speech forms (sen vs. siz).
• Capturing filler words or colloquialisms that don’t have a direct English equivalent.
• Ensuring diacritics (ç, ğ, ı, İ, ö, ş, ü) are typed correctly — a missing dot or accent can change the meaning of a word.

Transcriptions are often the basis for creating subtitles, training documents, or searchable archives, so accuracy is critical. Companies expanding into Turkey should ensure they use professional transcriptionists familiar with Turkish orthography.

While Turkish uses the Latin alphabet, its unique characters create real challenges for global brands. Fonts must fully support Turkish, subtitling requires adjustments for word length and politeness, transcription must capture accurate diacritics and tone, and desktop publishing must account for text expansion and formatting rules. By planning ahead and testing thoroughly, you can ensure your Turkish content looks professional, reads naturally, and connects authentically with your audience.

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