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Is there a word that would refer to a number or a letter, but not any other character (like a comma or an exclamation mark)?

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An alphanumeric character is one which is either alphabetic or numeric — that is, either a letter or a digit. As a noun, we can talk about alphanumerics for the collection of them, as I do here in this answer.

The term alphanumeric does not include punctuation, symbols, combining characters (like diacritics), spacing characters, or control characters.

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  • Ah. Is there a corresponding noun? Commented Mar 24, 2013 at 0:07
  • @stephenwade You could just call them alphabetics, the way people call things diacritics (which are usually combining characters).
    – tchrist
    Commented Mar 24, 2013 at 0:37
  • Do you mean alphanumerics?
    – MetaEd
    Commented Mar 24, 2013 at 1:26
  • @MετάEd Ulp, yeah.
    – tchrist
    Commented Mar 24, 2013 at 1:35
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    Alphanumeric can be used as a noun, but mostly used by itself with the words character/field/string implied. Whereas, 'alphanumerics' is a collective term. Commented Mar 24, 2013 at 4:19

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