Umê script

Uchen script, umê script, and transliterations

Umê (Tibetan: དབུ་མེད་, Wylie: dbu-med, IPA: [umɛ̂]; variant spellings include ume, u-me) is a cursive form of the Tibetan alphabet. The name means "headless," and is a style of the script used for both calligraphy and shorthand. A distinctive feature of umê compared to uchen is the absence of the horizontal guide line across the top of the letters. Between syllables, the tseg mark (་) often appears as a vertical stroke. There are two main kinds of umê writing:

• 'Zhuza (Tibetan: འབྲུ་ཙ་, Wylie: bru-tsa), used for writing documents.
• Bêcug (Tibetan: དཔེ་ཚུགས་, Wylie: dpe-tshugs), used for writing scriptures.

There is also a block form of the Tibetan alphabet, containing a horizontal line, referred to as uchen (Tibetan: དབུ་ཅན་, Wylie: dbu-can, "with a head").

Another example of umê script; note the vertical tseg marks (་)

See also

• Tibetan script
• Uchen script
• Tibetan calligraphy