Glossary

Unicode normalization (NFC)

Rewriting text into one canonical form so visually identical strings compare equal.

An accented letter can be stored as one code point or as a base letter plus a combining mark. NFC composes them. Normalization is not transliteration: José stays José.

Lesson: Normalize Unicode, keep the accents
Practise: Normalize names without changing letters

Related: Trim, Entity resolution