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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.

Etymology

The term has been used in English since 1727, borrowed 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 in lithographs from Frederick Catherwood's drawings of undeciphered glyphs of the Maya civilization in the early 1840s.

Typography

In typography, a glyph is 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 an em-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.

Other uses

  • In the Appaloosa Interactive video games Ecco the Dolphin and Ecco: The Tides of Time, a "glyph" is one of several different types of crystalline objects which are usually larger than the protagonist, Ecco. Glyphs may block routes, give a "password" for passing routes blocked by other glyphs, restore Ecco's energy, give hints, or save the game in certain levels.
  • In Heroscape, glyphs are magic objects on the ground that grant special powers.
  • In Guild Wars a glyph is an Elementalist only skill that usually help with energy management.
  • In the MMORPG MapleStory there's a quest item called "Hyper Glyph".

See also

Typography is the art and techniques of type design, modifying type glyphs, and arranging type. Type glyphs (characters) are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques.
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grapheme is the fundamental unit in written language. Graphemes include alphabetic letters, Chinese characters, numerals, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems.

In a phonemic orthography, a grapheme corresponds to one phoneme.
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Symbols are objects, characters, or other concrete representations of ideas, concepts, or other abstractions. For example, in the United States, Canada and Great Britain, a red octagon is a symbol for the traffic sign meaning "STOP".
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writing system is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.

General properties

Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that one must usually understand something of the
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numeral system (or system of numeration) is a framework where a set of numbers are represented by numerals in a consistent manner. It can be seen as the context that allows the numeral "11" to be interpreted as the binary numeral for three
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Punctuation is everything in written language other than the actual letters or numbers, including punctuation marks (listed at right), inter-word spaces, capitalization, and indentation.
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dingbat is an ornament or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament". The term supposedly originated as onomatopoeia in old style metal-type print shops, where extra space around text or illustrations would be filled by "ding"ing an ornament
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Unicode is an industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in any of the world's writing systems. Developed in tandem with the Universal Character Set standard and published in book form as The Unicode Standard
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The Miscellaneous Symbols plane of Unicode (2600–26FF) contains various glyphs representing things from a variety of categories: Astrological, Astronomical, Chess, Dice, Ideological symbols,
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Allography, from the Greek for "other writing", has several meanings which all relate to how words and sounds are written down.

An allograph can simply be the opposite of an autograph, that is it is a person's words or name (signature) written down by someone else.
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Handwriting regeneration - the simulated production of a given recording of handwriting movement. This is realized, not using the actually recorded kinematic or kinetic signals, but an abstracted model of human movement control.
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8th century - 9th century - 10th century
850s  860s  870s  - 880s -  890s  900s  910s
885 886 887 - 888 - 889 890 891

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Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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9th century - 10th century
850s  860s  870s  - 880s -  890s  900s  910s
885 886 887 - 888 - 889 890 891

:
Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
Art - Literature - Music - Science

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Egyptian hieroglyphs
Child systems Hieratic

ISO 15924 Egyp

Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
Egyptian hieroglyphs (sometimes called hieroglyphics
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Frederick Catherwood (February 27, 1799 – September 27, 1854) was an English artist and architect, best remembered for his meticulously detailed drawings of the ruins of the Maya civilization. He explored Mesoamerica in the mid 19th century with writer John Lloyd Stephens.
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Maya civilization is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as its spectacular art, monumental architecture, and sophisticated mathematical and astronomical systems.
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18th century - 19th century - 20th century
1810s  1820s  1830s  - 1840s -  1850s  1860s  1870s
1837 1838 1839 - 1840 - 1841 1842 1843

:
Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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Typography is the art and techniques of type design, modifying type glyphs, and arranging type. Type glyphs (characters) are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques.
..... Click the link for more information.
grapheme is the fundamental unit in written language. Graphemes include alphabetic letters, Chinese characters, numerals, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems.

In a phonemic orthography, a grapheme corresponds to one phoneme.
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computing is synonymous with counting and calculating. Originally, people that performed these functions were known as computers. Today it refers to a science and technology that deals with the computation and the manipulation of symbols.
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character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language.

An example of a character is a letter, numeral, or punctuation mark.
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In the philosophy of language, a natural language (or ordinary language) is a language that is spoken, written, or signed (visually or tactilely) by humans for general-purpose communication, as distinguished from formal languages (such as computer-programming
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writing system is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.

General properties

Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that one must usually understand something of the
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Graphics (from Greek ; see -graphy) are visual presentations on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, computer screen, paper, or stone to brand, inform, illustrate, or entertain.
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ligature occurs where two or more letter-forms are joined as a single glyph. Ligatures usually replace two sequential characters sharing common components, and are part of a more general class of glyphs called "contextual forms" where the specific shape of a letter depends on
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typewriter is a mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic device with a set of "keys" that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a document, usually paper.
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hyphen ( ‐ ) is a punctuation mark. It is used both to join words and to separate syllables. It is often confused with the dashes ( –, —, ― ), which are longer and have different functions.
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apostrophe ( ’  or  ' ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages written in the Latin alphabet.
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Full Stop is an album released in 2000 by Annabelle Chvostek.

Track listing

  1. "Icy blue"
  2. "Messages get through"
  3. "Body Work"
  4. "Gray's Pussycat Edie"
  5. "Chills"
  6. "Blows me away"
  7. "La La La"
  8. "Booby Boo"
  9. "That in itself"

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