Finding Glyphs

Sometimes you just need the right character. In the most recent versions of InDesign, we can highlight a single glyph, and we’ll be shown alternates underneath it (if any exist). Of course, we may wish to substitute one with another that is completely different.

What’s a Glyph?

A glyph a visual way to represent a character. There may be several (or many!) glyphs for a single character (sometimes the other way around, too). In InDesign, go to Type > Glyphs. Each little box holds a glyph in the font chosen at the bottom. Some fonts have thousands of glyphs, and some not so many.

Let’s say there’s one that catches your eye, and you’d like to use it instead of the boring bullets already in use. Highlight one of the boring bullets, then right-click and choose Load Selected Glyph in Find. If you look in the Glyph section of Find/Change, you’ll see the bullet in the Find Glyph field. Now, in the Glyphs panel, right-click on the pretty glyph you’d prefer to use and choose Load Glyph in Change. In principle, you can use a standard Text Find/Change by putting the glyph’s Unicode ID number (if you know it) between a less than and greater than sign: <2022> for that bullet. Interestingly, the glyph I chose also has the same Unicode ID. There are different IDs that are used, but in Find/Change we don’t have to worry. Each glyph shows up in the right field, we click Change All, and each bullet is now…whatever that is.