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Glite Dictionary
🔤 A written unit 💻 A text character
grapheme

grapheme

8.0
A single visible character in digital text that may be made of several parts, like letters with accents or emoji
  • noun
  • /ˈɡræfiːm/
  • Specialized
translation icon : grafema
  • The teacher explained that a grapheme is the smallest part of written text that readers can recognize.

And she uses technology to take the language and to to make it into graphemes, you know, like, and then she's created a book.

Examples

  • Each letter and symbol on the screen is a grapheme that helps to form words and sentences.

  • And she uses technology to take the language and to to make it into graphemes, you know, like, and then she's created a book.

    Danny Jones

  • These vowels were indicated on the screen with the grapheme that is normally written in Dutch with a common Dutch word to clarify the intended vowel sound.

    Academic text (2012)

  • In written language, a single grapheme can consist of multiple code points to represent complex characters.

Synonyms

graphic symbol
vsgrapheme
  • Specialized
5.9

A written sign that stands for a sound, word, or idea

is the smallest visual unit perceived by a reader not necessarily sound based

Surface Forms

grapheme singular
graphemes plural

Morphology

grapheme = graph (opaque) = graph + eme

Although the form is built from 'graph' plus '-eme', the computing/typography sense is a specialized technical term that is not inferable from the parts for most learners.

Etymology

The word grapheme comes from the Greek root graph- meaning 'write' and the ending -eme meaning a small 'unit'. So in digital text a grapheme is the smallest visible 'unit' a reader sees, which can be one or more computer characters, for example a letter plus an accent or an emoji.