Umê script

Kyuyig (Tibetan: འཁྱུག་ཡིག།་, Wylie: kyug-yig) or Gyu-yig (Tibetan: རྒྱུག་ཡིག།, Wylie: gyug-yig), is the most common form of Umê that people in the Tibetan region use as an informal shorthand for notes and personal correspondence. It is extremely cursive, with free-flowing, distorted glyph forms. It remains unstandardised and is difficult to decipher because of its divergent shapes.

The other main style of the Tibetan script is the upright block form, uchen (དབུ་ཅན་ dbu-can; IPA: ). The name of the block form, uchen means "with a head", corresponding to the presence of the horizontal guide line. This script is the standard formal variant of the script, used for official and religious purposes.

Styles

Umê scripts span from formal calligraphy to highly informal shorthand with context-specific styles. Besides Kyuyig, there are (broadly) five main styles of umê writing:

• Drutsa (Tibetan: འབྲུ་ཚ་, Wylie: 'bru-tsa), used for writing documents.
• Bêtsug (Tibetan: དཔེ་ཚུགས་, Wylie: dpe-tshugs), used for writing scriptures.
• Tsugtung (Tibetan: ཚུགས་ཐུང༌།, Wylie: tsug-tung) shortened, abbreviated variant traditionally used for commentaries.
• Tsugring (Tibetan: ཚུགས་རིང་།, Wylie: tsug-ring) used for novice scribes to improve handwriting and familiarity with the script. It is elegant with vertically elongated glyphs.
• Tsugma-chu (Tibetan: ཚུགས་ཆུ་ཡིག་, Wylie: tsug-ma-kyug) a hybrid style designed to be written quickly without losing the uchen form.