Also, in Japanese syllabaries, a number of the characters are made up of more than one separate mark, but in general these separate marks are not glyphs because they have no meaning by themselves. However, in Turkish this dot is a glyph because that language has two distinct versions of the letter i, with and without a dot. In most languages written in any variety of the Latin alphabet, the dot on a lower-case ⟨i⟩ is not a glyph because it does not convey any distinction, and an ⟨ı⟩ in which the dot has been accidentally omitted is still likely to be recognized correctly. The adjacent characters, ſ ( long s) and i (that would separately be represented by two distinct graphemes ⟨ſ⟩ and ⟨i⟩), represented as a single glyph ( typographic ligature), ſi
![nms glyphs nms glyphs](http://pm1.narvii.com/6904/f091db946fdd57aff6b87fd5467a035f3d5599e9r1-1600-1000v2_uhq.jpg)
In summary, in typography and computing, a glyph is a graphical unit. The range of glyphs required increases correspondingly. In typography and computing, the range of graphemes is broader than in a written language in other ways too: a typeface often has to cope with a range of different languages each of which contribute their own graphemes, and it may also be required to print non-language symbols such as dingbats. 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). If there is more than one allograph of a unit of writing, and the choice between them depends on context or on the preference of the author, they now have to be treated as separate glyphs, because mechanical arrangements have to be available to differentiate between them and to print whichever of them is required. It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language, which could be a grapheme, or part of a grapheme, or sometimes several graphemes in combination (a composed glyph). Glyphs are considered to be unique marks that collectively add up to the spelling of a word or contribute to a specific meaning of what is written, with that meaning dependent on cultural and social usage.Ī glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". In typography, a glyph is an elemental symbol within an agreed set of symbols, intended to represent a readable character for the purposes of writing. Various glyphs representing the lower case letter " a" they are allographs of the grapheme ⟨a⟩