Talk:Grapheme

message: In computing and telecommunications, a "character" is either a representation of a grapheme or is another grapheme-like unit as required for text processing, and it often manifests in encoded form. There is often not a one-to-one relationship between characters and graphemes. Unicode has many non-graphic/'control' characters, for example, and it has a half-dozen hyphen (or overloaded hyphen/dash/minus-sign) characters, each with different behaviors and histories, whereas the Latin script has only one hyphen grapheme.
The writing system article says that "character" is synonymous with grapheme. That article uses the term character — referring to a grapheme, not a computing/telecom character — quite a bit. I would like to know if experts in the study of written languages use the term character and grapheme interchangably like this. If so, it should be mentioned here in the grapheme article. Any comments/info appreciated. Thanks — mjb 9 July 2005 03:31 (UTC)
:Of the two terms, grapheme is the one with a more rigorous and technical definition (base or atomic unit of a writing system), and which can be more readily used in descriptions of writing systems in general, since it was coined for that purpose (as a parallel to phoneme, in linguistic study of spoken languages). By contrast, the term character seems to be in use mainly for specific sub-fields of writing system studies, most notably perhaps in Asian writing systems (cf. Chinese character). When used this way character may be (nearly) synonymous with grapheme, although it is likely that this is not adhered to exactly, and furthermore when used in the study of an individual writing system such as Chinese, that character has a particular meaning ascribed to it which has come about to meet the specific needs of that discipline, and may not be completely transferable in that sense to studies of other writing systems. I have further expanded the terminology section in the writing system article to try and capture these notions.--cjllw | TALK 08:26, 2005 July 11 (UTC)
::In typography circles, typographers, type designers, typesetters and graphic designers refer to typographic characters as letters, glyphs or characters. The term "grapheme" has been used in the font article as a synonym for glyph or character. 
::"Grapheme" is certainly a technical and rigorous definition, but whoever put it into the font article is coming from a  writing system viewpoint alien to typographers, designers and and lay users of typography, and quite inappropriate for writen discourse on typography.
::Wikipedia is supposed to be a general knowledge resource that demystifies, rather than obscures its subjects for the benefit of lay readers. On that basis "grapheme" is inappropriate for any of the typography articles. I am replacing instances with glyph or the next most appropriate word, wherever appropriate. Arbo 06:19, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grapheme vs character 

message: I have removed the link to the Merrian-Webster pronunciation link.  We can easily provide our own free version and host it here. Superm401 - Talk 09:58, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove EB pronunciation link 

message: It says that box, using three graphemes, represents a word containing four phonemes, /b/, /o/, /k/ and /s/.  But isn't /ks/, being an affricative, one phoneme?  So box would represent /b/, /o/ and /ks/?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.212.110.120 (talk) 22:28, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Good question. This is certainly not a good example. Moreover, it is not in the reference given. I just had tagged this as such, along with a number of other statements that appear to be original research. After reading your question, and seeing that it hasn't been answered for over 2 years, I will simply remove these. (See also below) — Sebastian 23:03, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boks egzample 

message: To illustrat what this is about could we (should we) mention where different symbols are the same grapheme in one language but separate graphemes in others - this is similar to the situations with phonemes not being equivalent across different languages.
An example I know is that a crossed Z is usually an alternative to a normal Z, and understood as equivalent in English or other languages (it's commonly used particularly by mathematicians to distinguish it from a number 2). In Polish a crossed Z is equivalent to one of their "zh" sounds (either the dotted or acute accent Z - don't remmeber which), and therefore distinct from an uncrossed Z. I have seen printed advertisments using fonts with both symbols.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.212.36.193 (talk) 19:17, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  different symbols which are the same grapheme in one language but separate graphemes in others 

message: I put some system in the mess of different layouts, which included single quotes, double quotes, italics, and slashes. Now the article uses:
* Angle brackets <> for graphemes (as per the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language);
* Slashes // for phonemes; 
* Double quotes "" for quoted letters.
Actually, for angle brackets I was using less-than and greater-than signs <>. Another user used real angle brackets ⟨⟩ for the same purpose here, which I like, because it looks good on my monitor and doesn't require Nowiki, as e.g.  does. The reason why I didn't do that was that I'm not sure if it displays well for all readers. What do others think - should we use those instead? — Sebastian 00:24, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I made :de:Vorlage:Graphem in the German Wikipedia which uses the preferred brackets by default. Nobody complained yet, although I know fonts which produce bad spacing around them. I didn’t have the time yet to put the same amount of work into the English articles that I have put into :de:Graphem, although they certainly need it – very much. — Christoph Päper 08:10, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wow, that looks like you put in a lot of work! And btw, I'm impressed with :de:Graphem, too; I think we all here could learn from that article; in particular in light of the previous two discussions. Now I have one question about the template: When are the optional parameters actually used? (Or not used, as when even the first parameter is omitted, resulting in a gamma.) If I may have a wish, it would be that the test&demo section contained some text for each example, explaining what it's good for. — Sebastian 18:15, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  I’ve expanded the documentation since. — Christoph Päper 20:54, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Brackets for graphemes 

message: If anyone is still watching this article, I would appreciate a review of Allography#Typography, which I wrote recently. (It may be that the citations I've added there can be used here too?) --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:50, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Allography: Typography 

message: I don't want upset any applecarts accidentally, so this is to alert editors to my proposal. 
I have created a new sidebar [right] along the lines of  for articles that are mainly about graphemes but inevitably include information about IPA symbols and sometimes phonemes. We must assume that most visitors will not be familiar with the , /x/ and [x] notations, so the new template will tell them where to go to find out.  
I have opened a discussion section at Template talk:Linguistics notation#Invitation to comment to invite any advice, comment, observations or reservations, please. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 21:40, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments invited on new template: Linguistics notatation 

message: The Latin E, the Cyrillic Ε and the Greek Ε all look alike but have different meanings and code-points. So could anyone advise, please are these the same glyph, the same grapheme, the same something else or just mere coincidence? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:59, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Those are allographs. (P.S., alloglyphs aren’t a thing.) Editmakerer (talk) 22:41, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Wait, they’re homoglyphs. My mistake. Editmakerer (talk) 22:44, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: If you spot your error within a few minutes, you can revert but in a case such as this, you need to use strikeout, thus (and yes, you were right: homoglyph for letters, Homograph for words). --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:55, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you 😅 Editmakerer (talk) 00:30, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  E, Е and Ε: Allographs or alloglyphs? or none of the above? 

message: Following consensus at talk:Glyph, I have edited the article Glyph so that it is exclusively about letterforms, the primary topic. It still doesn't read well so fresh eyes are welcome to improve it further, please. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:51, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Glyph