glyphs

A glyph is the visible shape that conveys a unit of writing or symbol within a script. In typography and linguistics, a glyph is the concrete representation of a character as it appears in a given font or typeface. The term distinguishes the surface form (the glyph) from the abstract unit (the character) that it encodes. A single character can be realized by multiple glyphs across different fonts and styles.

Glyphs have a long historical record, dating to ancient systems such as hieroglyphs and cuneiform, and extending through all contemporary writing systems. The term itself comes from the Greek glyphe, meaning a carving or sculpture, reflecting the traditional emphasis on surface form as a carved or drawn symbol. In modern use, glyphs include letters, numerals, punctuation, diacritical marks, ligatures, and logograms, as well as pictograms used for signs and icons.

In typography, glyphs are the shapes stored in a font file. Each character may have several glyphs, including stylistic variations and contextual forms. Rendering engines perform shaping, kerning, ligature substitution, and diacritic placement to select and position the appropriate glyphs for a given text. Digital encoding systems, especially Unicode, assign code points to abstract characters; fonts provide the corresponding glyphs and may offer alternative glyphs for stylistic or language-specific needs. If a font lacks a required glyph, systems may substitute a fallback glyph.

Glyphs also play a central role in signage and iconography, where pictograms and symbols communicate information quickly without reliance on a particular language. They present challenges in cross-script rendering, diacritic combining, and font variability, all of which influence readability and accessibility.

See also: typography, Unicode, ligature, diacritic, punctuation.