Character vs. Glyph

Typographic terminology is sometimes very specific and can be very confusing – even for seasoned designers.

A character is the symbol representing an individual letter, numeral, punctuation, sign, symbol, accent, or other elements in a typeface.

A glyph is the actual representation of that character. Several glyphs may represent one character as in this example.

The letter “a” is represented by these four glyphs: upper case, true small cap, lower case, lower case swash alternate, and superscript a.