Editing Ruby character (section)

{{Short description|Small characters that show pronunciation}}
{{About|Ruby characters in the East Asian cultural sphere|the programming language|Ruby (programming language)|other uses|Ruby (disambiguation)}}
'''Ruby characters''' or '''rubi characters''' ({{CJKV|j=ルビ|r=rubi|k=루비|rr=rubi}}) are small, annotative [[gloss (annotation)|glosses]] that are usually placed above or to the right of [[logogram|logographic]] characters of languages in the [[East Asian cultural sphere]], such as [[Sinitic languages|Chinese]] [[Chinese characters|''hanzi'']], [[Japonic languages|Japanese]] ''[[kanji]]'', and [[Korean language|Korean]] ''[[hanja]]'', to show the logographs' pronunciation; these were formerly also used for [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]] ''[[chữ Hán]]'' and ''[[chữ Nôm]]'', and may still occasionally be seen in that context when reading archaic texts. Typically called just '''ruby''' or '''rubi''', such annotations are most commonly used as pronunciation guides for characters that are likely to be unfamiliar to the reader.