A character set is the full range of characters a font supports. It determines which languages the font can set: basic Latin, extended Latin for Central European accents or Vietnamese, Greek, Cyrillic and many other writing systems.
Where to see it
The character set is detailed in foundry specimens and on platforms such as Google Fonts, which let you filter fonts by language or writing system. When a character is missing, the software replaces it with another font or with an empty rectangle nicknamed “tofu”, a sign that the character set should be checked before any multilingual project.
Why this detail matters
Checking a font's character set is an essential step before choosing it:
- A font that does not cover every letter of a language forces you to mix several fonts, which breaks the harmony of the text;
- For an international brand, an extended character set ensures a consistent identity across every country and language;
- On the web, the loaded character set can conversely be limited to the languages actually needed, to lighten files and speed up display.
Related term
Unicode is the standard that assigns a unique number to every character; a font's character set is built on it.