non-alphabeticadj.

1873 Presbyterian Q. & Princeton Rev. Apr. 383 The writing of the non-alphabetic nations.

1948 E. Minns in D. Diringer Alphabet p. xi Our author deals first with non-alphabetic writings, the great systems of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China and Central America.

1979 Sci. Amer. Apr. 121/1 It would be no more difficult to print Greek or Arabic characters than it is to print the Roman alphabet, and even nonalphabetic languages such as Chinese can be reproduced.

1998 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 24 Sept. 62/2 All this makes for a hefty tome, a one-man nonalphabetic encyclopedia that requires much concentration from readers.

1926 C. H. Judd Psychol. Social Institutions 176 All that remained to be done was to..discard all the non-alphabetic elements..to which the Egyptian scribes so fondly clung.

1960 K. M. Delavenay & E. Delavenay Introd. Machine Transl. vi. 90 A meaningful group of signs, alphabetic and non-alphabetic (spaces, hyphens, etc.).

1992 UNIX Rev. Dec. 67/2 The first line combines the files; the second line puts each word on a line by itself (by translating nonalphabetic characters to new lines and squeezing out adjacent new lines).