What is the difference between Glyph and Font?
What is the difference between Glyph and Font?
Question
I was going through one document and I came across this term 'glyph'. The term was new to me so looked into wiki for its definition. I felt both glyph and font is same. Am I correct? Else please tell me what is the difference between this two.
Edit:
I am newbie in this field. So feeling bit difficulty to picturise your answers. If you can add examples in your answers that will be very much helpful.
Accepted Answer
It can be confusing because often times you find out that people use the term "font" openly to refer to many things in typography. Here's a lively discussion on fonts and typefaces.
Traditionally, font is a term used when discussing a set of characters of a certain typeface and in the same family. A font has also been used to describe a software used to produce a typeface in your design, which explains why we have our fonts licensed.
A glyph is the variety of designs of a certain character. If you have a collection of 3 different designs of the letter A, you have 3 glyphs.
Popular Answer
A glyph is an individual character. It might be a letter, an accented letter, a ligature, a punctuation mark, a dingbat, etc.
A font is a digital file which is used to display a typeface, which contains the entire upper- and lowercase alphabet as well as punctuation, numbers, and other special characters.