MICHAEL EVERSON, a 40-year-old typographer who lives in Dublin, considers himself blessed because he has found his life's work: to be an alphabetician to all the peoples of the world. Mr. Everson's largest project to date -- a contribution to a new version of Unicode 4.0, an international standard for computerizing text -- is cementing his reputation.

His mission has taken him to Kabul, Afghanistan, and Helsinki, Finland; to Beijing, Tokyo and Redmond, Wash. His Dublin house is a shrine to his obsession with every writing system that humans are known to have created -- 148 of which Mr. Everson says he can use for writing his name. In the hallway is an icon of the saints Cyril and Methodius (Cyril is often credited with inventing the Cyrillic alphabet) and a page from a Maghreb manuscript from North Africa.

To read the full article, go here.