Home/Taiwanese Mandarin/All pairs/字元 vs 字符
character · Preferred written form
Preferred written form The two preferred forms differ by a single character. In Taiwan the standard term is 字元; on the Mainland it is 字符 - both point at “character”.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Education dictionaries record 字元、字符 for this concept. The Mainland standard is among them - the difference is which form each side makes the default.
Neither term carries an HSK or TOCFL level in this table - this pair is dictionary-recorded, not syllabus-derived.
Pair source: the OpenCC cross-strait conversion table, which maps each Mainland term to the form used in Taiwan.
| Taiwan · 台灣 | Mainland · 大陆 | |
|---|---|---|
| Written form | 字元 | 字符 |
| Reading | ㄗˋ ㄩㄢˊ zì yuán | zì fú ㄗˋ ㄈㄨˊ |
| Senses | character | character (computing) |
| Syllabus | — | — |
| MOE records | 字元 · 字符 | |
| Dictionary | not in the LinZi dictionary | entry → |
| Audio | — | |
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