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In typography
Typography

Typography is the art and techniques of typesetting, type design, and modifying type glyphs. Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques....
, a grapheme (from the , grápho, "write") is the fundamental unit in written language. Graphemes include alphabetic letters
Letter (alphabet)

A letter is an element in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Each letter in the written language is usually associated with one phoneme in the spoken form of the language....
, Chinese characters, numeral
Numeral

The term numeral can refer to:* Numeral system, a system of mathematical notation for writing numbers* Number names, the words used in a language or writing system to represent numbers...
s, punctuation
Punctuation

Punctuation is everything in written language other than the actual letters or numbers, including punctuation marks , Interword separation and indentation....
 marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems.

In a phonemic orthography
Phonemic orthography

A phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. These are sometimes termed true alphabets, but non-alphabetic writing systems like syllabary can be phonemic as well....
, a grapheme corresponds to one phoneme
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
. In spelling systems that are non-phonemic such as the spellings used most widely for written English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 multiple graphemes may represent a single phoneme.






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In typography
Typography

Typography is the art and techniques of typesetting, type design, and modifying type glyphs. Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques....
, a grapheme (from the , grápho, "write") is the fundamental unit in written language. Graphemes include alphabetic letters
Letter (alphabet)

A letter is an element in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Each letter in the written language is usually associated with one phoneme in the spoken form of the language....
, Chinese characters, numeral
Numeral

The term numeral can refer to:* Numeral system, a system of mathematical notation for writing numbers* Number names, the words used in a language or writing system to represent numbers...
s, punctuation
Punctuation

Punctuation is everything in written language other than the actual letters or numbers, including punctuation marks , Interword separation and indentation....
 marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems.

In a phonemic orthography
Phonemic orthography

A phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. These are sometimes termed true alphabets, but non-alphabetic writing systems like syllabary can be phonemic as well....
, a grapheme corresponds to one phoneme
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
. In spelling systems that are non-phonemic such as the spellings used most widely for written English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 multiple graphemes may represent a single phoneme. These are called digraph
Digraph (orthography)

A digraph, bigraph , or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined....
s (two graphemes for a single phoneme) and trigraph
Trigraph (orthography)

A trigraph is a group of three letters used to represent a single sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters combined....
s (three graphemes). For example, the word ship contains four graphemes (s, h, i, and p) but only three phonemes, because sh is a digraph. Conversely, a single grapheme can represent multiple phonemes: the English word "box" has three graphemes, but four phonemes: .

Different glyph
Glyph

A glyph is an element of writing. Two or more glyphs representing the same symbol, whether interchangeable or context-dependent, are called allographs; the abstract unit they are variants of is called a grapheme or character ....
s can represent the same grapheme, meaning they are allographs
Allography

Allography, from the Greek for "other writing", has several meanings which all relate to how words and sounds are writing down....
. For example, the minuscule letter a
A

The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is a ; the plural is aes or, more commonly, a's....
 can be seen in two variants, with a hook at the top , and without . Not all glyphs are graphemes in the phonological sense; for example the logogram
Logogram

A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonogram , which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantics....
 ampersand
Ampersand

An ampersand , also commonly called an " 'and' sign," is a logogram representing the grammatical conjunction "and". The symbol is a Typographic ligature of the letters in et, Latin for "and"....
 (&) represents the Latin word et (English ‘and’), which contains two phonemes.

See also

  • Allography
    Allography

    Allography, from the Greek for "other writing", has several meanings which all relate to how words and sounds are writing down....
  • Digraph (orthography)
    Digraph (orthography)

    A digraph, bigraph , or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined....
  • Character (computing)
    Character (computing)

    In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written language form of a natural language....
  • Glyph
    Glyph

    A glyph is an element of writing. Two or more glyphs representing the same symbol, whether interchangeable or context-dependent, are called allographs; the abstract unit they are variants of is called a grapheme or character ....
  • Letter (alphabet)
    Letter (alphabet)

    A letter is an element in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Each letter in the written language is usually associated with one phoneme in the spoken form of the language....
  • Sign (semiotics)
    Sign (semiotics)

    In semiotics, a sign is "something that stands for something else, to someone in some capacity". It may be understood as a discrete unit of Meaning , and includes words, images, gestures, scents, tastes, textures, sounds – essentially all of the ways in which information can be communicated as a message by any sentient, reasoning m...
  • Trigraph (orthography)
    Trigraph (orthography)

    A trigraph is a group of three letters used to represent a single sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters combined....