If you don’t have that, use Helvetica Now. “To render this element, use a font named Joanna.
The premise is simple: the list gives the browser a chain of command. After all, the font might be updated in the future with more glyphs, or you might simply switch to another font that supports the character you wanted:įont-family: Joanna, Helvetica Now, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif
When you copy and paste it, under the hood it remains the original character you wanted to see. It’s a shorthand for “this space intentionally left blank.” It’s not a traditional Unicode character with its own specific code-rather, just a rectangle that is drawn to cover up for the character that should be there. notdef often looks like a simple rectangle, sometimes with a cross inside. And so a font needs to be able to say, “I have no idea what this particular character is supposed to look like.” A computer can display text written by someone else, perhaps long ago, and using a font unknown to its creator, or one that might have not even existed when that text was created.
But computers put a strange distance between fonts and text. In the world of metal type, when you hold a letter in your hand you also hold its specific font-and so it’s impossible to ask a font to output a letter it has never heard of. notdef is the original version of font fallback-a rudimentary solution for a problem that didn’t exist when printing was physical. notdef, and the dot is there to signify it’s unlike any others.notdef is a glyph of last resort, one to be used when a font is asked for a character its designer did not bother to draw. Some fonts cover a smaller amount of all the possible characters, and some cover a bigger amountĪt some point, you have to draw the line. Even a simple western font comes with over two hundred glyphs: twenty-six letters of the alphabet plus the same bunch in uppercase, ten digits, symbols, punctuation, accents. This space (sometimes) intentionally left (somewhat) blankĪs a type designer, one of your jobs is to give your font every glyph it needs.Ī glyph is a typographical term roughly meaning a character. That mechanism helps fonts when they run out of characters, and it’s called font fallback. Moreover, all have one common underlying cause-an important and in some ways very impressive mechanism of computer typography many of us might be completely unaware of. They seem like small bugs that permeate everyday interaction with our tasteless machines.īut these are not bugs, at least not in the traditional sense. These little transgressions can be confusing, but not frustrating enough to spend time dissecting. (If you actually raised your hand, thank you!) Something tells me there is no one left with their hand down at this point.
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