Grapheme
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 Writing systems |
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| History Grapheme List of writing systems |
| Types |
| Alphabet Featural alphabet Abjad Abugida Syllabary Logography |
| Related topics |
| Pictogram Ideogram |
In typography, a grapheme (from the Greek: γράφω, gráphō, "write") is the fundamental unit in written language. Graphemes include alphabetic letters, Chinese characters, numerals, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems.
In a phonemic orthography, a grapheme corresponds to one phoneme. In spelling systems that are non-phonemic – such as the spellings used most widely for written English – multiple graphemes may represent a single phoneme. These are called digraphs (two graphemes for a single phoneme) and trigraphs (three graphemes). For example, the word ship contains four graphemes (s, h, i, and p) but only three phonemes, because sh is a digraph. Conversely, a single grapheme can represent multiple phonemes: the English word "box" has three graphemes, but four phonemes: /bɑːks/.
Different glyphs can represent the same grapheme, meaning they are allographs. For example, the minuscule letter a can be seen in two variants, with a hook at the top <a>, and without <ɑ>. Not all glyphs are graphemes in the phonological sense; for example the logogram ampersand (&) represents the Latin word et (English ‘and’), which contains two phonemes.
[edit] See also
- Allography
- Digraph (orthography)
- Character (computing)
- Glyph
- Letter (alphabet)
- Sign (semiotics)
- Trigraph (orthography)
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