Editing Grapheme (section)

{{Short description|Smallest functional written unit}}
{{distinguish|Graphene|Graphane|Graphyne}}
{{more citations needed|date=April 2020}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}
[[File:A-small glyphs.svg|thumb|Various [[glyph]]s representing instances of the lower case letter {{gpm|[[a]]}}, considered to be [[allograph]]s of the same grapheme ]]
{{Orthography notation}}

{{Reading}}
In [[linguistics]], a '''grapheme''' is the smallest functional unit of a [[writing system]].<ref>Coulmas, F. (1996), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Oxford: Blackwell, p. 174</ref>
The word ''grapheme'' is derived from [[Ancient Greek]] {{tlit|grc|gráphō}} ('write'), and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''[[phoneme]]'' and other [[emic unit]]s. The study of graphemes is called ''[[graphemics]]''. The concept of graphemes is abstract and similar to the notion in [[computing]] of a [[Character (computing)|character]]. (A specific geometric shape that represents any particular grapheme in a given [[typeface]] is called a [[glyph]].)<!-- Examples go in the body for such a short article. This opening section should be no more than a concise summary of the body content, per [[WP:LEAD]]. -->