Overstrike

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For the word processing mode where newly typed characters replace existing characters (Overtype), see Insert key. For the typographical presentation of words with a line through the centre, see Strikethrough. For the term in numismatics, see Overstrike (numismatics). For the game, see Overstrike (video game).

In typography, overstrike is a method of printing characters that are missing from the printer's character set. It was widely used around the early 1990s. The character was created by placing one character on another one — for example, overstriking "L" with "-" resulted in printing a "Ł" character.

The ASCII code supports six different diacritics. These are: grave accent, tilde, acute accent, diaeresis, cedilla, and circumflex accent. Each is typed by typing the preceding character, then backspace, and then the 'related character', which is `, ~, ', ", ,, or ^, respectively for the above mentioned accents.

Many font renderers in computer programs invent missing bold characters by overstriking the normal character with itself, slightly horizontally offset. The horizontal offset is essential since, unlike a typewriter where repeating a letter in exactly the same space will make it darker, most modern printers will not darken repeated "strikes" to the same space. Actual bold fonts are designed with some features thicker and others the same size as a regular font, so the use of this "fake bold" is considered undesirable from a typographic point of view. Some typesetting programs, including Mac OS X's native font chooser and text renderer, go so far as to refuse to fake bold in this way.

However, with the wide adoption of Unicode (especially UTF-8, which supports a much larger number of characters in different writing systems), this technique is of little use today.

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