Last updated on
Sep 11, 2025
Explore how character sets and alternate glyphs in Illustrator unlock creative text customization and styling options.
Typefaces include many characters beyond the standard keyboard set. Depending on the font, these can include ligatures, fractions, swashes, ornaments, ordinals, titling and stylistic alternates, superior and inferior characters, old-style figures, and lining figures.
A Glyph is a specific form of a character. For example, in some fonts, the capital letter A is available in several forms, such as swash and small-cap.
There are three ways to insert alternate glyphs:
- Selection In-Context menu: Lets you view and insert glyphs available for the currently selected character.
- Glyphs panel: Lets you view and insert glyphs from any typeface.
- OpenType panel: Lets you set up rules for using glyphs. Using the OpenType panel is easier than inserting Glyphs one at a time and ensuring a more consistent result.
Note
The OpenType panel works only with OpenType fonts.
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