View source for Social:Allograph

{{Short description|Letters with alternative shapes}}
[[File:LowercaseG.svg|thumb|{{angbr|g}} rendered with or without a looptail are allographs of each other
]]

In graphemics and typography, the term '''allograph''' is used of a [[Glyph|glyph]] that is a design variant of a letter or other [[Social:Grapheme|grapheme]], such as a letter, a number, an ideograph, a punctuation mark or other typographic symbol. In graphemics, an obvious example in English (and many other writing systems) is the distinction between [[Social:Letter case|uppercase and lowercase]] letters. Allographs can vary greatly, without affecting the underlying identity of the grapheme. Even if the word "cat" is rendered as "cAt", it remains recognizable as the sequence of the three graphemes {{angbr|c}}, {{angbr|a}}, {{angbr|t}}.<ref name="Cambridge">{{cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia=The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language |entry=allograph|edition=second |publisher=Cambridge University Press |date=1997 |page=196}}</ref> 

<span class="anchor" id="script"></span>Letters and other graphemes can also have significant variations that may be missed by many readers. The letter g, for example, has two common forms ([[Glyph|glyph]]s) in different [[Typeface|typeface]]s, and a wide variety in people's handwriting. A positional example of allography is the long s ({{char|ſ}}), a symbol which was once a widely used as a non-final allograph of the lowercase letter s. 

A grapheme variant can acquire a separate meaning in a specialized [[Social:Writing system|writing system]], such as the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]] used in [[Social:Linguistics|linguistics]]. Several such variants have distinct [[Code point|code point]]s in [[Unicode]] and thus are not  allographs for some applications.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kumar|first=Sanjeev|date=2012-10-15|title=A Comparative Study of UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32 of Unicode Code Point|journal=The IUP Journal of Telecommunications|location=Rochester, NY|volume=IV|issue=2|pages=50–59|ssrn=2161812}}</ref>

== Han characters ==
{{main|Social:Variant Chinese characters}}
In the Han script, there exist several graphemes that have more than one written representation. Han typefaces often contain many variants of some graphemes. Different regional standards have adopted certain character variants. For instance:

:{| class=wikitable
!Standard!!Allograph!!Definition
|-
|{{wipe|China}}||lang="zh-Hans-CN" align="center"|户||户
|-
|{{wipe|Japan}}||lang="ja" align="center"| 戸||戸
|-
|Taiwan||lang="zh-Hant-TW" align="center"| 戶||戶
|}

== Typography ==
{| style="float: right;"
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||[[File:Euro Construction.svg|thumb|right|Official dimensions of the [[Finance:Euro sign|euro sign]] ]]
||[[File:Moreeurofonts.svg|thumb|right|Allographs of the sign in a selection of type faces]]
|}
In typography, the term 'allograph' is used more specifically to describe the different representations of the same grapheme or character in different typefaces.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nuqta.com/kb/arabic-script-tutorial |title = Arabic Script Tutorial | quote= In Arabic the abstract, nominal graphemes are represented by context-dependent allographs. Simplified support for Arabic handles contextual allographs according to two patterns, discontinuous and continuous assimilation. (Allographs and Ligatures) | author = Thomas Milo | website=nuqta.com | date= 2012 | access-date=24 November 2019}}</ref> The resulting [[Font|font]] elements may look quite different in shape and style from the reference character or each other, but nevertheless their meaning remains the same.<ref>{{cite journal| title=The role of allograph representations in font-invariant letter identification | doi= 10.1037/xhp0000384 | pmid= 28368166 |pmc = 5481478| author1 = David Rothlein | author2 = Brenda Rapp |journal = Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance|volume = 43|issue = 7|pages = 1411–1429| date = 3 April 2017 }}</ref> 

In [[Unicode]], a given character is allocated a [[Code point|code point]]: all allographs of that character have the same code point and thus the essential meaning is retained irrespective of font choice at time of printing or display. Typically, for example, {{unichar|0067|Latin small letter g}} is given a loop tail in serif typefaces but not in sans-serif faces (e.g., <span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size:110%">Times New Roman: g</span>, <span style="font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif">Helvetica: g</span>) but its code point is constant and its meaning persists irrespective of typeface. (The code {{unichar|0261|Latin small letter script g}} in the [[IPA Extensions]] block is specified for use with the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]].)

==Homoglyph==
The concept of the allograph may be compared and contrasted with that of the [[Homoglyph|homoglyph]]{{snd}} glyphs of different meaning that are visually similar. For example, the letter O and the figure [[0|0]] have similar shape but have different meanings; the three letters A, Α and А look identical but are characters from three different scripts (Latin, Greek and Cyrillic). 

==See also==
* {{Annotated link |Allophone}}
* {{slink|Copto-Arabic literature|Allography}}{{snd}}Literature written by Copts in Arabic. (The term "allography" is used in Copto-Arabic studies for the Coptic practice of direct transliteration of their texts from [[Social:Coptic script|Coptic script]] to Arabic script.)

==References==
{{reflist}}


[[Category:Writing systems]]

{{Sourceattribution|Allograph}}