I recently did something I hardly ever do…I actually purchased a font. Well, technically I purchase fonts all the time but not in the usual way. I have a subscription at Creative Fabrica which allows me to “freely” download fonts all the time as they are unlimited as part of my subscription. So, I kind of forget that those fonts are truly “paid for” but at a very nominal cost. Other than those fonts, I usually try to stick to only the fonts I can get for free.

On very rare occasion I stumble across a must have font and breakdown and buy it. Usually that purchase is driven by the glyphs (ligatures) associated with said font. And that’s what spurred this post.

Open Type Fonts

Way back in March of 2023, my “Ready To Add Words” post covered a lot of information about fonts. I talked about the differences between OTF (Open Type) and TTF (True Type).

If you read that post you know the big difference between the two are the “extra features” we get with an Open Type font.

OTF was designed to enable more functions than TTF. An example being that OTF has a format capable of storing as much as 65,000 characters. The ability to keep extra characters besides the usual ones (A-Z, 0-9, punctuations, and symbols) gave designers a platform to add more character to OTF, such as: Ligatures, Glyphs, Small caps, Alternate characters, & Old-style figure.

So, what exactly is a glyph? I actually touched on them very lightly in my “What’s That Font” post on May 9, 2023.

What The Glyph?

A glyph is the basic element of the font, occupying a “slot” in the font. A glyph can be a default typographic representation of a character (if it has a Unicode codepoint assigned), or a variant typographic representation of one or more characters, as the curly swashes you see in the image above.

Sometimes a glyph is a combined form of two or more glyphs (then they’re accessed via typographic features or composites). Note that all glyphs are unique, even if they represent different forms of the same character. For instance, in a handwriting font, each variant of the character A would be a distinct glyph:

Glyphs are identified in several different ways. Every glyph in a font has a Glyph ID or index, which is the physical numbering of the glyphs in the font (starting at zero, so if there are 27 glyphs in a font, they have Glyph IDs 0–26). Glyphs in most fonts also have glyph names, which are brief ASCII text labels without spaces (for example, the glyph name for “&” is “ampersand”).

Additionally, many or all glyphs in a font are encoded, which means that the glyph is the default for a given Unicode character or codepoint. For example, the default ampersand should have the Unicode codepoint U+0026. Some glyphs in a font may have no Unicode codepoint but every glyph must have a unique name.

Okay…you’re either yawning or your eyes have rolled back in your head after all the “scientific” stuff.

The bottom line is glyphs make our text look fancy! That is if we can find them…

Missing Glyphs

The font above is the one I purchased: Amoresa Font family from MyFonts. This font contained 487 glyphs and boy was I excited about that. I mean seriously look at those gorgeous curls and swashes.

Silly me!!! I had no idea what I was going to miss out on. You see I have a font manager so I thought I’d have a field day with those 487 glyphs.

Back on March 14, 2023 in my “What Is A Font Manager” post I talked about how they make it easier to access all the glyphs that come with a font. My apologies…turns out that’s not necessarily true. And that goes the same for the Microsoft Character Map that most of us use.

As I’ve recently learned, only certain applications allow full access to ALL the glyphs. And that gorgeous Amoresa font included OpenType variants some of which were only accessible via OpenType-aware applications. Did I realize that before I purchased it…no. It was kind of one of those “fine print” things we generally don’t see/read.

So, what the heck is an OpenType-aware application?

Adobe software such as Illustrator, InDesign & Photoshop (CC2015 & above) should allow access to all of the glyphs. Some search sites will tell you that Microsoft (MS) Word allows you to access glyphs from the Advanced tab for a given font. After copious attempts to access the glyphs for my new font, I can tell you without hesitation that I cannot see ALL of the associated glyphs in MS Word!

Once again THANKS Adobe for short-changing all of us Photoshop Elements (PSE) users!

Bottom line…don’t take it for granted that you will be able to see all the glyphs you think you’re getting with any given font. And lesson learned…ALWAYS think twice before purchasing a font simply because you love all the fancy glyphs!

Glyph Tips

Never assume you will be able to see all the fancy features a font “ad” may display. Unless you use an OpenType-aware application, they may not be accessible to you.

Even using one of the most highly touted Font Managers “MainType” for Windows won’t get you access to all the glyphs!

ALWAYS look for the fine print about a font’s glyphs before you purchase.

Other than that…be grateful for the glyphs you can access via a font manager or a character map.

Thanks for reading this week’s Tuesday Tip. Remember, if you have any suggestions or questions please don’t hesitate to “Message Me“. Check back next week with another tip about masks! Click “Follow Me” to stay in touch. I hope you have a wonderful week!