alphabet

An ordered set of CHARACTERs which can be combined to form the ensembles, words or expressions of a language or to represent data. Whereas an alphabet is finite, the number of expressions to which it gives rise to may not be. A binary alphabet recognizes only two characters, e.g., "0" or "1". The English alphabet has 26 characters and the Japanese more than 4000. The term "alphabet" is also synonymous with "repertoire" (of symbols, states, behaviors) or with a set or collection (of elements) in finite mathematics. (Krippendorff )