fonts/knowledge/glossary/terms/homoglyph/content.md


A homoglyph is a [glyph](/glossary/glyph) with a design that can appear indistinguishable from—or least very similar to—another glyph with a separate meaning.

An uppercase I, lowercase l, and numeral 1 can appear near-identical in some typefaces, which presents a [legibility](/glossary/legibility_readability) problem. If the wrong character is used, it can confuse screen reading software and cause potential issues with searching and sorting. In some typefaces, there can be too subtle a distinction between different [dashes](/glossary/dashes) and the minus [character](/glossary/character).

<figure>

![Various examples of glyphs that appear to be homoglyphs in one typeface, then rendered again in another typeface that intentionally varies their design: Hyphens and minus symbols in one example; “Il1” characters in another. Also shown: An English-language sentence using the “H” character and a Greek-language sentence using the identical-but-semantically-different “Η” character.](images/thumbnail.svg)

</figure>

Homoglyphs also manifest themselves across different languages and/or scripts. An “H” glyph in English is not the same, semantically, as the lookalike “H” glyph (for the “eta” character) in [Greek](/glossary/greek_script), for instance. This isn’t a problem in print, but is an issue for any on-screen type, which is subject to being copied and pasted, and read aloud by screen reading software.

Max Halford has written more on this topic on [Homoglyphs: different characters that look identical](https://maxhalford.github.io/blog/homoglyphs/).
-												New gfk content for q1 (#4398)

* 1st commit: all content, basic formatting, svg links

This is the new Q1 content. Almost all formatting is needed. Excerpts are all missing. There’s absolutely no “related” metadata yet. No alt text, either. But images are all in, renamed to `thumbnail.svg` where appropriate, and structurally everything is there.

* Testing link format

* Adding all CSS v2 API links for axis defs

* Testing Markdown-format tables for axis steps

* Adding 2 gloss links to all axis defs’ opening para

* More links in intro paras

* Inserted all link (blank) into all gloss. terms

Almost all of these links need the URLs added later, but at least they’re now marked up to resemble anything that was underlined in the Google Docs.

* Inserted all (blank) links in articles

Also formatted most of the big tables in new Markdown table format

* Gloss. excerpt test

* Excerpts for all axis definitions

* Remaining (non-axis) glossary excerpts

* Renaming 1 illo per article to `thumbnail`

* Updating illo filename in content to reflect `thumbnail` name change

* Adding prev/next URLs for all new articles

* Captions for all articles

Some still need font credits adding

* Alt text for `a_checklist_for_choosing_type`

* Alt text for `language_support_in_fonts`

* Alt text for `the_foundations_of_web_typography`

* Alt text for `an_overview_of_latin_type_anatomy`

Only a small change, as most alt text was already present for this one.

* Illo alt text for all axis definitions in Glossary

(And  table formatting, too.)

* Updated illos for `cursive_axis` & `wonky_axis`

* Remaining illo alt text for non-axis-related Glossary terms

* Added all related gloss. terms to new articles

* Added all related articles to gloss. terms

* First round of actual URLs on new Gloss. terms

* Actual URLs in all remaining Gloss. terms

* All real URLs for all new articles

And improved checklist formatting

* New Thai & Devanagari illos

Hopefully the final versions

* OG excerpts for all 4 new articles

* New illo as per Dave’s rec + TP copy tweak + illo filenames

* Article ordering within each `module.textproto` file

* Update prev/next for existing articles to reflect new Q1 content
											
										
										
											2022-03-23 18:03:21 +03:00
 								A homoglyph is a [glyph](/glossary/glyph) with a design that can appear indistinguishable from—or least very similar to—another glyph with a separate meaning.
 								An uppercase I, lowercase l, and numeral 1 can appear near-identical in some typefaces, which presents a [legibility](/glossary/legibility_readability) problem. If the wrong character is used, it can confuse screen reading software and cause potential issues with searching and sorting. In some typefaces, there can be too subtle a distinction between different [dashes](/glossary/dashes) and the minus [character](/glossary/character).
 								<figure>
 								![Various examples of glyphs that appear to be homoglyphs in one typeface, then rendered again in another typeface that intentionally varies their design: Hyphens and minus symbols in one example; “Il1” characters in another. Also shown: An English-language sentence using the “H” character and a Greek-language sentence using the identical-but-semantically-different “Η” character.](images/thumbnail.svg)
 								</figure>
 								Homoglyphs also manifest themselves across different languages and/or scripts. An “H” glyph in English is not the same, semantically, as the lookalike “H” glyph (for the “eta” character) in [Greek](/glossary/greek_script), for instance. This isn’t a problem in print, but is an issue for any on-screen type, which is subject to being copied and pasted, and read aloud by screen reading software.
 								Max Halford has written more on this topic on [Homoglyphs: different characters that look identical](https://maxhalford.github.io/blog/homoglyphs/).