This special issue of the Journal has been given overto papers presented in September 2007 at BilkentUniversity, Ankara, during a workshop entitled‘Romanisation in Comparative Perspective: explainingsuccess and failure’. These contributions explore ina number of different historical and geographicalcontexts – Turkey, the ex-Soviet Central Asianstates, South Asia and Japan – the factors that haveinfluenced attempts at implementing script changeand what explains the relative success or failure ofthese ventures. As İlker Aytürk points out in hiseditorial introduction, little work has yet beendone on the comparative aspects of these processesof (attempted) romanisation. But, as he argues, thesignificance of the topic calls out for a frameworkto enable precisely this kind of analysis to takeplace, and so he provides one at the end of his ownarticle, something, it is hoped, that will stimulatefurther discussion in other forums.