Glyph
|
variant glyphs representing the character a (allographs of a) in the Zapfino typeface. |
In
typography, a
glyph is the shape given in a particular
typeface to a specific
grapheme or
symbol.
The term for the abstract entity represented by a glyph is
character: a typographical character may be a grapheme (an element of a
writing system), but also a numeral, a punctuation mark, or a pictorial or decorative symbol (such as
dingbats, or
Unicode's "
Miscellaneous Symbols").
Two or more glyphs representing the same grapheme, either interchangeably or context-dependent, are called
allographs.
In
graphonomics, the term
glyph is used for a non-character, i.e: either a sub-character or multi-character pattern.
The term has been used in English since 1727, loaned from
glyphe in use by French antiquaries (since 1701), from Greek γλυφη "a carving," from γλύφειν "to hollow out, engrave, carve" (cognate to Latin
glubere "to peel" and English
cleave)
Compare the carved and incised "sacred glyphs"
hieroglyphs, which have had a longer history in English dating from the first Elizabethan translation of Plutarch, who adopted "hieroglyphic" as a Latin adjective.
But "glyph" first came to widespread European attention with the engravings and lithographs from
Frederick Catherwood's drawings of undeciphered glyphs of the
Maya civilization in the early
1840s.
In
typography, a
glyph a particular graphical representation of a
grapheme, or sometimes several graphemes in combination (a
composed glyph), or only a part of a grapheme. In
computing as well as typography, the term
character refers to a grapheme or grapheme-like unit of text, as found in
natural language writing systems (
scripts). A character or grapheme is a unit of
text, whereas a glyph is a
graphical unit.
For example, the sequence
ffi contains three characters, but can be represented by
one glyph, the three characters being combined into a single unit known as a
ligature. Conversely, some
typewriters require the use of multiple glyphs to depict a single character (for example, two
hyphens in place of a
dash, or an overstruck
apostrophe and
period in place of an
exclamation mark).
Most typographic glyphs originate from the characters of a
typeface. In a typeface each character typically corresponds to a single glyph, but there are exceptions, such as a font used for a language with a large alphabet or complex writing system, where one character may correspond to several glyphs, or several characters to one glyph.
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Typeface*
Punchcutting*
Character encoding*
Character (computing)
