Another term that covers alphabets, syllabaries, ideographic scripts and so on, is “writing system.” Some sources (including Wikipedia) consider the collection of glyphs the “script” and each method of using a script to write a language a “writing system.”

Another term that covers alphabets, syllabaries, ideographic scripts and so on, is “writing system.” Some sources (including Wikipedia) consider the collection of glyphs the “script” and each method of using a script to write a language a “writing system.” By this definition, the use of simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Pinyin, Wade-Giles and Bopomofo to write Mandarin are all different “writing systems,” and the use of Latin script to write German and Vietnamese are different writing systems too.