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Duplicate characters in Unicode
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<p><a href="/facts/Unicode/DDu3MfPV">Unicode</a> has a certain amount of duplication of <a href="/facts/Character_(computing)/X2zKLFFB">characters</a>. These are pairs of single Unicode code points that are <a href="/facts/Canonically_equivalent/yXUtR6GW">canonically equivalent</a>. The reason for this are compatibility issues with legacy systems. </p><p>Unless two characters are canonically equivalent, they are not "duplicate" in the narrow sense. There is, however, room for disagreement on whether two Unicode characters really encode the same <a href="/facts/Grapheme/uzXGIsAr">grapheme</a> in cases such as the U+00B5 µ <a href="/facts/Micro-/VXlL1EhM">MICRO SIGN</a> versus U+03BC μ <a href="/facts/Mu_(letter)/j1MMkE2w">GREEK SMALL LETTER MU</a>. </p><p>This should be clearly distinguished from Unicode characters that are rendered as identical glyphs or near-identical glyphs (<a href="/facts/Homoglyph/bBjaC7t2">homoglyphs</a>), either because they are historically cognate (such as Greek <a href="/facts/%CE%97/jnxIHnSd">Η</a> vs. Latin <a href="/facts/H/2ReerlNA">H</a>) or because of coincidental similarity (such as Greek <a href="/facts/%CE%A1/qwHge41z">Ρ</a> vs. Latin <a href="/facts/P/41AF4mKp">P</a>, or Greek Η vs. Cyrillic <a href="/facts/%D0%9D/Vf67VBxB">Н</a>, or the following homoglyph septuplet: astronomical symbol for "Sun" <a href="/facts/%E2%98%89/AV39SEay">☉</a>, "circled dot operator" <a href="/facts/XNOR_gate/LW793PwY">⊙</a>, the Gothic letter <a href="/facts/%F0%90%8D%88/yoMt3Rsl">𐍈</a>, the IPA symbol for a bilabial click <a href="/facts/Tenuis_bilabial_click/TCnfmjtX">ʘ</a>, the <a href="/facts/Osage_script/eyARB6YM">Osage</a> letter 𐓃, the <a href="/facts/Tifinagh/kGv4VKmW">Tifinagh</a> letter ⵙ, and the archaic Cyrillic letter <a href="/facts/Monocular_O/sVJje96v">Ꙩ</a>). </p>