Talk:Homoglyph

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I'm not so sure that it was the case that typists used 1 and l and 0 and O interchangeably - it was more that, because these look similar, many typewriter manufacturers economised by having no 1 key (and sometimes no 0 key), the typist then being obliged to use lower-case L (and upper-case O, respectively). So the use of lower-case L for 1 was out of necessity rather than choice. I don't think any typist would deliberately have used 1 (one), if it was available, for a lower-case L, not least because this is inefficient for a touch-typist. This suggests that the use of lower-case L for 1 (and O for 0) was one-way rather than interchangeable. — Paul G 08:53, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• "In fact, most keyboards did not even have a key for the digit "1", requiring users to type the letter "l"" -- Unsupported. A look at the (mostly lousy) images of typewriter keyboards in Google images revealed keyboards with and without a 1 key. Kdammers (talk) 03:34, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  The only typists who ever used l and 1 or 0 and O interchangeably were those accustomed to typing on a keyboard where the numbers weren't available. And when we did interchange them on a full keyboard, it was invariably a mistake.

  I went through my first 2 years of college typing most of my homework etc. on a manual typewriter that lacked 1 and 0, but I was doing programming and CS homework on machines that had full keyboards. Muscle memory being what it is I made that mistake fairly often.

  When I got a full keyboard at home I was grateful for the opportunity to *stop* using them interchangeably. 173.228.13.5 (talk) 15:25, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to reference the site homoglyphs.net which lists homoglyphs to the basic Latin characters from various (selectable) Unicode ranges and also allows the user to generate a homograph using these ranges. As the site was put up by me, in accordance with WP:EL I'd like to ask here if it would be OK to add an External Links section and link that site. Tschild (talk) 00:24, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to reference the site Namkara homoglyph registration which lists the many homoglyphs of a user-entered domain name, vis-a-vis Unicode Consortium's UTR#36. Some filtering is applied to limit homoglyphs to those domain names that may be supported by domain name registry policies. As the site is owned by me, I'd like to avoid conflict-of-interest and request here for the addition of the aforementioned external link. Mja52590 (talk) 20:48, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As a matter of "original research," I'm deeply dubious of the article's sunny claim that "Most current type designs carefully distinguish between these homoglyphs." It seems to me, on the web, that I struggle daily with even just the basic "eye-ell-one" and "zero-oh" ambiguities. When I go hunting for a font for my own use, I generally check these out, and I very rarely can find a font that satisfactorily distinguishes them. Perhaps the remark means "Most currently-designed ..." rather than "Most currently-used ...", but if so it's a nearly empty phrase: "new" designs almost always pay honor to some classic homoglyph-happy face. - Jackrepenning (talk) 20:45, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've also noticed the decline in carefully distinguished glyphs for these pairs. The claim that "most current type designs carefully distinguish" was true up until about 2008. Since then there have been IME an increasing prevalence of fonts that do not adequately distinguish them - including some where they are completely identical.

I attribute this to the 'democratization' of electronic text. The need to distinguish between similar-looking glyphs was and is crucial in programming contexts, and that is why fonts prior to 1980 or so had less need to distinguish them. Programming meant they had to be distinct, and since a large proportion of electronic documents were by or for programmers they had to be distinct in fonts used for electronic documents ... from 1980 up to about 2005. But now virtually all people read on a screen instead of on paper. The proportion of programmers has become minuscule compared to people who are content to get the distinction by context alone. So now most font designs, browser defaults, per-document font decisions, etc, are again made just as they were in the 1950s, by people who are not thinking about programming at all. With the same results.

Programming nowadays means picking specialized fonts ('monospaced' or 'typewriter' fonts) where the distinction between glyphs is clear and characters have a consistent width. But when you're reading random text on the web, you're just not assumed to care whether the glyphs are different and in general won't notice. If you see 'l' between two digits the context makes you see it as '1' and your brain just plows on. 173.228.13.5 (talk) 16:09, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How do I sign my username? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ApolloFardarter (talk • contribs) 07:58, 9 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Jackrepenning's point has not be responded to. Our article has a claim, but there is no citation for it. By the way, here are 1 and l in Times New Roman [to see them in TNR, go to the edit version of this page; on the other hand, look at the capital I and lower case l (eye and el, respectively) on the view version: both look to me like vertical strokes that I see no difference in them: Il)] -- different, yes, but, at least for me, only by careful examination. Kdammers (talk) 03:38, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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In many fonts (like Wikipedia's font) they're visually different. Here is an image in which I compared the two in many fonts. It looks terrible because I made it in MS Paint. Existent human being (talk) 12:56, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Are they synonymous? Are they used synonymously? Or is it just sloppy use of the words grapheme and glyph interchangeably in English because we don't have letters like ⟨ñ⟩ (one grapheme, two glyphs [unless I've got it reversed yet again].

Would anyone care to "compare and contrast" (set out similarities and differences), please? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:20, 18 April 2023 (UTC) revised --16:46, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]