Talk:Glyph

Image
Can you include an image with a glyph ?? compared with a normal type. TIA (Thanks In Advance). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.144.127.11 (talk • contribs)

We need Robert Langdon over here. Ironiridis 03:07, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Removal of ligature
While ffi is not a character, it can be a glyph, when combined as a ligature. Shinobu 13:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * that's exactly what the article is saying now. the removed statement claimed that ffi could be a character, which is incorrect. dab (&#5839;) 10:05, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm more at unease with this: "The term for the abstract entity represented by a glyph is character". What I'm trying to say is that this should perhaps be rephrased a little. Something like "The term for the abstract entities glyphs represent is character". That way you don't rule out ligatures. They are discussed further on in the text, but I still feel this paragraph feels a bit odd. Maybe it's just me. Shinobu 13:24, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

In the sentence: 'But "glyph" first came to widespread European attention with the engravings and in guild wars lithographs from'... the 'guild wars' link goes to the article on the video game of that name. I'm not sure what it was supposed to link to, but i'm guessing it wasn't that. 4.248.221.49 15:32, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I link hopped here from an article on 16th century English Occultist John Dee and his use of a symbolic ideogram to represent a concept in his book [|Monas Hieroglyphica]. That being said, I think that there should be work done to disambiguate the use of the term "glyph" by the subjects of:


 * Use in Archaeology
 * Use in the Occult and/or Esoterism
 * Use in Typography

Anyone agree? VigilantLocutor (talk) 11:03, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Need Glyph (typography) and Glyph (archaeology)?
This article is about the use of the term "glyph" in typography but does not address the term glyph as it pertains to archaeology. This article is missing, to quote Wiktionary: "A figure carved in relief or incised, especially representing a sound, word, or idea [or] Any non-verbal symbol that imparts information".

I'm thinking that we might need 2 articles?? Madman 04:24, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
 * You are so right, and I am WP:boldly moving it, after 11 years. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 16:51, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

glyph vs. allograph
Some sources may use 'glyph' to mean 'allograph', but I doubt that's the predominant meaning. Per the OED, a 'character' is a distinctive written symbol (that is, a grapheme), but a glyph is specifically a carved symbol, not a graphic variant of a character. Given the ambiguity, wouldn't this article be better moved to allograph? kwami (talk) 12:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

This is a really, really academic article
I've read this article twice, and almost nothing has stuck due to the obscure technical terms and its academic style. At the risk of sounding like a cranky old man I'm definitely nominating this for translation into the 'Simple English' Wiki.... Harry Zilber (talk) 15:35, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Go for it. I've been in design for 20 years and I just had to read it twice. It is very jargon heavy.--Knulclunk (talk) 03:13, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes this page is unreadable in its current form. Were I qualified, I would re-write FROM SCRATCH. Crosslink (talk) 23:27, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Completely agree! The i with and without a dot?  Does not help explain the topic at all.  Todd (talk) 21:10, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Image:MAYA-g-log-cal-D10-Ok.png
This bot has detected that this page contains an image, Image:MAYA-g-log-cal-D10-Ok.png, in a raster format. A replacement is available as a Scalable vector graphic (SVG) at File:MAYA-g-log-cal-D10-Ok.svg. If the replacement image is suitable please edit the article to use the vector version. Scalable vector graphics should be used in preference to raster for images that can easily represented in a vector graphic format. If this bot is in error, you may leave a bug report at its talk page Thanks SVnaGBot1 (talk) 15:16, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
 * And I did this. Fruckert (talk) 07:22, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I came to this page to get an understanding of the term "glyph" as it relates to fonts. The article presently starts with an example of a dot and explains that it may or may not be a glyph. I would suggest that it would be better to start with a general definition of a glyph and only after that has been stated, should there be examples of specific glyphs and the reasons why they are or are not glyphs. After reading the entire article, I still have only a fuzzy idea of exactly what a glyph is.

I got this from Wiktionary, "A visual representation of a letter, character, or symbol, in a specific font and style." I do not know if that is completely accurate or not, but it is better than what is here. Due to my ignorance on this subject, I will leave any editing to others who are more knowledgeable.

--EPA3 (talk) 23:43, 23 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I completely agree. It is not clear why the dot on the dotless i should be considered a glyph.  The dotted i (including the dot) is one glyph, and the dotless i (just the base, without the dot) is another glyph. Todd (talk) 17:18, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Conflicting concepts
About the term "glyph", there are some variations, like at W3C this table with images showing the "typical symbols" in the column Glyph: --Krauss (talk) 16:40, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
 * W3C, perhaps in a "loose use of the term", use the concept "glyph = typical symbol" about a set (charset and Fonts) of possible representations.
 * the illustration here use an opposite concept, as "various glyphs representing the typical symbol".

Lede is garbage.
The lede contains the claim that the word glyph is a typographical term then later in the article Archealogical glyphs have a separate section, making the lede inconsistent. I note that my 1993 edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has ONLY the archeological and not the typographic meaning. The lede goes on to claim that the dot above the i in Turkish is a glyph "...because that language has two distinct versions of the letter "i"..." This is rubbish. This is like claiming that O and Q in English prove that the \ character is a glyph since it changes an O into a Q. The set of glyphs that make up a character set may or not contain elements that must be combined with other elements (diacritics). Note that I make no claim about whether Turkish has that particular glyph, just that the logic "it is a glyph because I and İ are different" is rubbish. This article fails miserably in actually defining what a "glyph" is - claiming it is a "mark" that "means (or changes the meaning of) something" is more rubbish. Changing a l to a T by a horizontal line on top of it is therefore a glyph? A glyph, it seems to me, is a member of the set of elements used to write a particular language, that set being one agreed to by the users/community. This topic gets a lot more complex in dealing with writing which is not character based (eg Chinese), or with information added to an element or group of elements either directly above, below, left or right of the element(s) or in some other location in the text. Some of this information may be variable in shape and size, making it difficult to precisely define typographically. It would be interesting to compare English, Arabic, and Chinese typographic definitions of the concept.72.172.11.121 (talk) 17:44, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Glyph v. ligature
I'm left a little confused by this article. If it is true, as the article says, that a diacritic is a separate glyph from the letter it is placed on (even when they touch), so that for example Ł is a combination of two glyphs even though it is a single grapheme and represents a single phoneme, how is it possible that a ligature such as the ſi-ligature in the photo counts as a single glyph even though it represents two phonemes and is obviously two graphemes run together? Either there is an inconsistency in the article, or a far better explanation is required. Or possibly there are varying views on what a glyph is, in which case that needs to be said. --Doric Loon (talk) 13:43, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Graphonomics
I removed the reference and section on Graphonomics because I was completely unable to find anywhere on the web any supporting evidence (but lots of copies of this information). I notice the word is not included in the list at Index of graphonomics-related articles. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:07, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Article scope and set index
My understanding is that set indices are simple lists, but this has large amounts of explanatory text with references. It is clearly formatted like an article. Looking at the history, it was not created as a set index and wasn't labelled as one until relatively recently sometime this year; for the two decades prior it was an article. The set index template isn't even in the right place; it would go at the bottom.

Converting it into a set index because it's scope seems excessive is a bizarre way to deal with the problem. A better solution would be to split off less relevant sections into their own articles with some disambiguator in the title much like Glyph (data visualization) already does. I would suggest splitting Glyph (architecture) and reorganising Glyph to focus it on written or inscribed elements in a system of symbols, which was the original topic.

Although, actually, I'm not sure Glyph (architecture) is needed; Triglyph may be sufficient. Do other such "glyphs" occur in architecture? I suspect someone might be generalising Triglyph is a way that doesn't actually occur in practice. It may be easier to simply delete the irrelevant material relating to architecture and data visualisation, since these topics are covered in other articles already.

I don't think a separate section heading for "archaeology" is needed, given that the only source for that section is an online dictionary that gives a single entry which clearly encompasses both typography and archaeology. Splitting it off into its own section seems forced. The material about its use in archaeology could easily be integrated into the broader topic of glyphs as elements within a system of symbols, be it a system of pictographs/ideograms or letters of a writing system (and by extension, the characters of a typeface). As far as I'm aware, "glyph" is not used in a specialised sense in archaeology; the general understanding of a "glyph" naturally encompasses archaeology, given that systems of symbols occur in archaeological records as well as in contemporary cultures.


 * tl;dr This was an article for 2 decades. Split or delete irrelevant material; a split may not be needed since other articles on these topics exist. Don't convert it into a set index just because the scope has been stretched a bit.

– Scyrme (talk) 18:46, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
 * That argument is persuasive and I concede.
 * So going forward, am I correct in summarising your proposal as this
 * Treat the "written symbols" topic as the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and dedicate this article exclusively to it.
 * Delete all the remaining material.
 * Create a redirect Glyph (architecture) (to Triglyph). Does Builder's signature need a mention somewhere? "Redirect with possibilities"
 * Add Triglyph and Maya glyphs to Glyph (disambiguation) (in the See Also, to be strictly according to the rules).
 * If it is, then I agree. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:50, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I have left a "notice of intent" at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Archaeology, in case anyone has any further advice. So let's leave it a week before taking action. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:06, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Should also add Glyph (data visualization) to the disambiguation page (I'm surprised it's not already there) but, otherwise, yes. – Scyrme (talk) 13:35, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅. I doubt that there will be any further comment but best leave it to Sunday before putting into effect. Meantime I've been building out the disambiguation page. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:40, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Recasting completed yesterday. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:13, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Glyphs, graphemes and characters
Even after cleaning it up, I'm still not happy with the section "Glyphs, graphemes and characters" as it stands, because it is rather a collection of miscellanea without any coherent structure. It really needs an intro but I can't think of anything more than what has already been said in the lead. Fresh eyes welcome. , any ideas? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:13, 28 November 2022 (UTC)