High Galactic

Ezra Bridger day 7 — Pages from Ezra Bridger's private journal, handwritten in High Galactic

"I get it now. It's a basic algebra thing. You have to picture it written down in High Galactic instead of listening to it."

―Nakari Kelen^[src]

High Galactic was a writing system^[1] that saw use during the Clone Wars^[2] and the Galactic Civil War.^[1] It was notably used in certain Basic holofeeds displayed on the planet of Coruscant, then capital of the Galactic Empire.^[3] Algebraic formulas could also be written down in High Galactic letters.^[1] The bottles containing the Nabooan wine called Domaine de la Maison sur le Lac also featured High Galactic characters on their stickers.^[2]

Behind the scenes

"Well, actually, they do use the Roman alphabet in the Star Wars universe."

―Pablo Hidalgo^[src]

Tractorbeamtext — The tractor beam information gauge, as it appears in the original *A New Hope* (top) and the 2004 DVD version (bottom).

The original version of the 1977 movie Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope contained occurrences of the real-life Latin alphabet. Although those labels were later edited into Aurebesh in the DVD release,^[4] the Expanded Universe kept featuring Roman letters in in-universe situations. Eventually, those occurrences were identified as High Galactic alphabet in The Written Word, a StarWars.com Hyperspace article written by John Hazlett.^[5] However, the Expanded Universe has since been rebranded Star Wars Legends, and is therefore not considered official canon anymore.^[6]

Nevertheless, Roman writings still appeared in "The Gungan General"^[7] and "Senate Murders," two episodes of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars canon television series.^[2] Eventually, the novel Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne recanonized the name High Galactic.^[1]

In the 2015 short comic Star Wars Annual 1 by Marvel Comics, a number of holofeed writings were mistakenly written in a Roman typeface that only mimicked real Aurebesh. When asked about it by a fan, Jordan D. White, editor for Marvel Comics, admitted there had been a mistake. However, he also endorsed the in-universe identification of those writings as High Galactic.^[8]