In information technology, a glyph (pronounced GLIHF) is a graphic symbol that provides the appearance or form for a character. A glyph can be an alphabetic or numeric font or some other symbol that pictures an encoded character.

The following quote is from a document written as background for the Unicode character set standard. An ideal characterization of characters and glyphs and their relationship may be stated as follows: A character conveys distinctions in meaning or sounds. A character has no intrinsic appearance. A glyph conveys distinctions in form. A glyph has no intrinsic meaning. One or more characters may be depicted by one or more glyph representations (instances of an abstract glyph) in a possibly context dependent fashion. Glyph is from a Greek word for “carving”.