Difference Between Glyph and Character of a Font
More often character and glyph are used interchangeably in typographic world but there is a subtle difference between the two. Glyph is visual manifestation of a character.
For example, a, c, f, z, 1, 5, 9, are characters. A character can be written in many ways based on stylistic and linguistic needs.
Therefore, a character may consist of one or many glyphs.
For example, letter āgā is written in many styles and therefore many glyphs may represent the letter āgā.
A document on Google Patents website defines glyph in these words: [RD]
āA glyph refers to the concrete, visual representation of a character. A glyph may represent one character (e.g., the lowercase letter āaā). A glyph may also represent more than one character (e.g., theft ligature). A glyph may also represent part of a character (e.g., the dot in the lowercase letter āiā). A glyph may also represent a nonprinting character (e.g., the space character).ā
I hope now you clearly understand the difference between a font glyph and a font character.
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