Polytonic Greek Unicode fonts
To suggest improvements, corrections, or additions, please contact Dr. Shirley
Unicode
If you see a row of eight accented Greek characters on the left which are similar to the ones on the right (not necessarily the same font), then you already have a Unicode polytonic Greek font installed and your computer should be ready to read (but not necessarily to write) polytonic Greek texts.
ἀ έ ῃ ϊ ὸ ῥ ϋ ᾧ
If you see some boxes amongst the characters, then you need to download and install a polytonic Greek Unicode font. This will enable you to read not only the basic Greek characters, but all the combinations of accents and breathings which are used with ancient Greek.
Polytonic Greek Unicode fonts
Note - as of the time I write this, the Elpenor site has suffered a breakdown. Although the main pages are intact, they do not link to download pages, so few of the fonts can be downloaded from their site until the breakdown has been repaired.
I prefer Greek fonts which use a circumflex rather than a tilde for the circumflex accent, a lunate epsilon, and a theta written with a horizontal line
- TLG's (old) polytonic font page - Early version - shows which characters are absent from specific polytonic Greek fonts
- TLG's current polytonic font page - with specimens of most fonts
- Aisa Unicode - Lucius Hartmann's page. Does not have full Latin characters
Aisa Unicode - Sample - Alkaios - Lucius Hartmann - Uses circumflex, not tilde
Alkaios - Lucius Hartmann
Alkaios - Sample - Alphabetum - by Juan José Marcos, 15$ shareware
Alphabetum - Download (demo)
Alphabetum - Sample - Andron Mega Corpus - Andreas Stötzner, commercial - five separate fonts
- Arev Fonts - Tavmjong Bah
- Arial Unicode - comes with Microsoft's Office 2000, FrontPage 2000, Office XP and Publisher 2002. Arial Unicode MS - Sample
- Aristarcoj - Russell Cottrell. Uses circumflex, not tilde
Aristarcoj - Download - Excludes Latin script
Aristarcoj - Sample - Asteria - Elpenor
- Athena - see "New Athena Unicode"
- Cardo - Scholars' Fonts
Cardo - David Perry
Cardo - Sample - Code2000 - Elpenor
Code2000 - Sample - Computer Modern Unicode - Andrey Panov
Computer Modern Unicode - Download
Computer Modern Unicode - Sample - DejaVu - SourceForge DejaVu fonts
- Everson Mono - very thin characters
Everson Mono - Sample - FMBF Tahoma - available at WAZU.JP
- FreeMono, FreeSans, FreeSerif - from Savannah
Free Mono - Download - Galatia SIL - not the same as the earlier SIL Galatia - SIL Uses circumflex, not tilde
Galatia SIL - SIL
Galatia SIL - Download
Galatia SIL - Sample page - Galilee - by Rodney Decker. Uses circumflex, not tilde
Galilee - Download - Gandhari Unicode - Andrew Glass - primarily for transliteration of Indic languages
Gandhari Unicode - Download - Garogier - Rogier van
Dalen
Garogier - Download - Gentium - Elpenor
Gentium - SIL
Gentium - SIL
Gentium - Victor Gaultney
Gentium - Sample - GentiumAlt - SIL. Uses circumflex, not tilde
- Georgia Greek - Elpenor
- GFS fonts - Greek Font Society - GFS Bodoni, GFS Didot, GFS Neohellenic, GFS Olga, GFS Porson
GFS Complutum
GFS Bodoni Classic, GFS Baskerville, GFS Gazis
GFS Didot Classic, GFS Porson, GFS Solomos, GFS Decker, GFS Orpheus Classic
GFS Didot, GFS Didot Display, GFS Bodoni, GFS Olga, GFS NeoHellenic, GFS Artemisia, GFS Theocritos (no lower case), GFS Elpis, GFS Galatea, GFS Orpheus, GFS Orpheus Sans, GFS Pyrsos
GFS fonts - Sample - Hindsight Unicode - from the History/Hindsight page of Darren Rigby's site
Hindsight Unicode - Darren Rigby
Hindsight Unicode - Download
Hindsight Unicode - Sample - IFAOGrec - Institut français d'archéologie orientale, free use with attribution - a Greek and Coptic font which contains the most important critical and diacritical signs, and the sigla and symbols used in editing papyrological and epigraphical texts, as well as Greek texts of specialized content such as mathematics, astronomy, magic, music, and poetry
IFAOGrec - Sample - Junicode - Peter Baker - (in beta) Unicode font for medievalists
Junicode - Download
Junicode - Sample - Kadmos U
- Kerkis - University of the Aegean
Kerkis - Sample - LeedsUni - Alec McAllister's page on the Leeds University site, developed for the Medieval Unicode Font Initative
LeedsUni - Sample - Legendum - Rogier van Dalen
Legendum - Download
Legendum - Sample - Linux Libertine - Linux Libertine Open Fonts project. Downloads as a .tgz compressed file, which can be opened with WinZIP or similar software. arc circumflex
Linux Libertine Open - Philipp Poll
Linux Libertine Open - Download - Lucida Sans Unicode, included in all versions of Windows, contains Unicode polytonic diacritics, though not polytonic precomposed characters
- Mediolanum - Ralph Hancock, $40, arc circumflex
- MgFuture UC Pol - comes with Ancient-Modern and Modern-Ancient Greek dictionary. Included in the demo/trial version
- MgOpen Canonica - EL/LAK / Magenta
MgOpen Canonica - Sample - Microsoft Sans Serif Version 1.41. Supplied with Windows XP SP2 (service pack 2). Earlier versions do not have polytonic characters
- Minion Pro - available free with Acrobat Reader version 7
To get the font, one must install Acrobat Reader version 7. Then look in the folder where acrobat reader was installed. It will probably be here on your computer: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat7.0\Resource\Font
You should see the Minion files. To install them : for Windows, open the control panel, switch to classic view, scroll down to fonts, and then copy the Minion fonts into your fonts folder. Later versions of Windows may require that you use the "Install" button on the font preview
Minion Pro download - Monospace Unicode fonts
Monospace - Sample - New Athena Unicode - Elpenor
New Athena Unicode - GreekKeys
New Athena Unicode - New Athena Unicode page on GreekKeys
New Athena Unicode - American Philological Association, with Greekkeys
New Athena Unicode - another GreekKeys page
New Athena Unicode - Sample
Capital omega looks like a large lower-case omega - Old Standard - Elpenor
Old Standard - Free Windows
Old Standard - Sample - Palatino Linotype - comes with Windows XP and Windows 2000
Palatino Linotype
Palatino Linotype - Sample - Porson - see GFSPorson - Greek Font Foundry
Porson - Sample - SBL Greek - Society of Biblical Literature
SBL Greek - Download
SBL Greek - Sample - Segoe UI - Microsoft, comes with Vista
Segoe UI - Sample - Silver Humana - Silver Mountain Software - Commercial
- Tempora LGC Unicode - Alexey Kruykov
Tempora LGC Unicode - Sample - Theano Didot - Elpenor
Theano Didot - Free Windows
Theano Didot, Modern (Porson), Old Style fonts - Alexey Kryukov
Theano Didot - Sample - Thryomanes Unicode
Thryomanes Unicode - Sample - Titus Cyberbit Basic - download after submitting a
form
TITUS Project
Titus Cyberbit Basic - Sample - Unicode Fonts for Ancient Scripts - George Douros. Several fonts for symbols, including Ancient Greek and Byzantine Musical Notation
Sample - Vusillus - comes with Antioch classical language utility version 2 - (50$ covers version 1 and version 2) Vusillus - Sample
- Vusillus Old Face - comes with Antioch classical language utility version 1 - (50$ covers version 1 and version 2)
Vusillus Old Face - Ralph Hancock, Italic - ScriptSource
- WAZU Japan's Gallery of Unicode fonts for polytonic Greek
- Fonts With Support for Unicode Polytonic Greek - STOA
- Links for Unicode Fonts, with examples of each - maintained by Russell Cottrell
- Unicode Fonts - Thesaurus Linguae Graecae
- Allen Wood's list of Greek Unicode Fonts
- Polytonic Unicode Greek Fonts
- Unicode fonts for PCs, MACs, and Unix systems - by Allen Wood
Utilities for working with Unicode fonts
- Texts and Tools - BiblicalGreek.org
- Antioch - Ralph Hancock. Downloadable program to type in Unicode. Registered users of Antioch also gain access to eight other polytonic fonts
- BabelPad - text editor
- Keyman - I haven't tried this one yet
Keyman - another site - MultiKey - Elpenor site - for writing polytonic Greek
MultiKey - freeware program for writing polytonic Greek. On my computer, with Windows 98 and Word 97 it runs OK for a while and then crashes the system. Then I have to close everything out and start again. Save frequently. The package comes with the font Aisa Unicode - don't use this font. It doesn't work with other Unicode fonts - Sibylla - for entering Greek polytonic characters
- Unitype - free demo for typing Unicode in Microsoft XP/2000
- Unicode Polytonic Greek for the WWW
- TypeGreek - Online utility for typing in Greek Unicode.
- TypeGreek Alphabet Key
- Greek Unicode Converter - to convert text written in some non-Unicode fonts into Unicode, for free
- Symbol Font to Unicode Converter - to convert text written in symbol font into Unicode, for free
Useful Articles
- How to write in polytonic Greek - Ellopos
- Unicode test page
- Unicode Polytonic Greek and the World Wide Web - STOA
- Unicode Polytonic Greek and the World Wide Web - getting started - STOA
- Unicode Polytonic Greek for the Web - how to use MSWord to type in Unicode - STOA
- Unicode and XML and CSS - STOA
- Code Charts - STOA
- Sample Texts - STOA
- Some other Unicode ranges - STOA
- Allen Wood's Unicode Resources
- Extended Character List - Allen Wood, codes for the extended characters
- Early Christian Writings - Instructions for typing Polytonic Greek in Windows, with a software keyboard download
- Microsoft Greek Polytonic Keyboard Maps
- Unicode Consortium
- MAC Browser Instructions - for setting browsers on MACs to view polytonic Unicode fonts
- HRI Project - Read, Write, Print and Email in Greek Unicode - links to instructions on how to read, write, spell-check, print and email in Greek. For Windows, MACS, Unix - Modern Greek site. Accents are not available
Copyright © 1999 Shirley J. Rollinson, all Rights Reserved
