Talk:Grapheme

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[edit] Grapheme vs character

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)

First, about the grapheme article. If it is true that «Different glyphs can represent the same grapheme», then it is obvious that «Not all glyphs are graphemes». I cannot understand what is the meaning of the following phrase: «Not all glyphs are graphemes in the phonological sense». Which is the «phonological sense» of the «grapheme»? Have «Chinese characters, numerals, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world’s writing systems» any phonological sense?

Second, about Grapheme vs Character. In Linguistics, character is the only general and neutral term for refering to any graphic element of writing systems. Grapheme — like lexeme, phoneme, semanteme, sememe, and so on — is evocative of certain structuralist-functionalist schools; therefore, there are a lot of linguists who do not use it at all.Walad1913 (talk) 13:07, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Remove EB pronunciation link

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)