Unicode Fonts for BIblical Studies

Whether you’re a Times New Roman, Baskerville, Garamond, or Comic Sans kind of person, the fonts, or typefaces, we use can positively or negatively affect the way people perceive our writing. While font selection may seem somewhat novel to the casual typist, authors who have to mix Roman and non-Roman (e.g. Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Kanji et al.) characters into one document know that “simple” font selection isn’t always so simple. At Milligan, this is especially pertinent to Bible majors, for whom referencing non-Roman (esp. Greek and Hebrew) characters is often a necessity.

In the late Spring of 2006 I turned in my first major exegetical paper containing non-Roman characters—a tragically puerile reading of Romans 8:28–30, if you must know. After emailing the document to myself, printing the paper at the library and heading to class, I made the horrifying discovery that every Greek word in my paper printed as a series of garbled symbols not at all resembling the Greek script. Not wanting to encounter the same problem for my next paper, I set out to find the best way to type, save and print documents using non-Roman scripts. Now, half a decade (and a few biblical languages) later, I’ve decided to share my insights into using biblical language fonts to their fullest potential. The following is intended as a guide for students and faculty who use non-Roman scripts in their research and writing.

An Introduction To Unicode

The Problem:

Computers read numbers, not letters—and even at that, computers don’t read numbers so much as they read sets of ones and zeros that represent numbers. Traditionally, each letter in a text file was assigned a value between 0 and 128—corresponding to each possible numerical value in one byte of data. This system provided sufficient unique numbers for assignment of the entire Latin alphabet (in both cases), all Arabic numerals, and most common punctuation. If one wished to use a different character set (e.g. Greek), one would have to use a different font.

For instance, if a Bible student wanted to type the word θεὀς, she would download a Greek font onto her computer, select it in her word processor, and perhaps type “ueOw.” Because she used a different font, the word would display properly on her screen—the “u” representing a theta and the “O” representing the omicron with accute accent. However, if she were to change the font back to, say, Times New Roman, her text would display just as she typed it, “ueOw.” So long as that same Greek font remained installed on her computer, the text would display properly. However, should she open the file on some other computer that didn’t have the font, it would not work.

The Solution: Unicode

Unicode is an attempt to solve this problem. Instead of replacing the standard 128 characters with different font faces, Unicode extended the number of possible characters beyond 128, allowing the assignment of a “unique, unified, and universal” number to each character of each language. So while “traditional” fonts (viz. ASCII, the Legacy system) replaced Roman symbols with non-Roman glyphs, a Unicode font adds symbols so that a single font can have Roman, Greek, Hebrew, Kanji, Cyrillic, etc. all side-by-side. Just as important, because Unicode is a standardized system, the encoding is consistent from one font to another. In other words, when one types, say, an upsilon with acute accent and diaeresis (ΰ) in one font, it will show up as the same combination in every other Unicode font (supposing the font has those characters).

The problem for the author, then, becomes how to access these characters, since there is no “upsilon” key on standard US keyboards. The solution is to change one’s keyboard layout. A keyboard layout uses software to reassign the physical keys on your keyboard to different Unicode values. To the uninformed user, this seems to be the same as just changing fonts, but in light of the above, we can see that this approach has a marked advantage, namely, that data input in Unicode reflects what the author, intends to type, not how a particular font interprets his or her data.

Putting It On Paper

For those people fortunate enough to have a printer immediately available, out-putting nicely processed text is as simple as File > Print. However, for those of us without a printer at home (or perhaps without ink), ensuring that our final printed product looks the way we intend becomes a problem. Most “computer lab” computers do not allow the average user to install fonts at will, leaving us at the mercy of system fonts—which may or may not include the characters needed, and almost certainly don’t look all that good (with a few notable exceptions). Moreover, while Microsoft Word remains the standard document format, many users use WordPerfect, Pages, or OpenOffice. The best solution—which is to say, the most simple, accessible, and universal solution—is to first “print” the document to PDF. By printing to PDF, the document’s formatting and font selection can be maintained, while maximizing the document’s portability and accessibility.

For Mac OS users, making a PDF of a document (or anything, really), is as simple as clicking the “PDF” button at the bottom-right hand corner of any print dialog (Right), then saving the file to your desktop.

Windows users who have Microsoft Office 2010 can print to PDF from within Word. Simply “Save As” then change the file type from the drop-down menu to “PDF.”

Windows users (of all varieties) can install a “virtual” printer in order to print to PDF. Personally, I use Cute PDF on my work computers—though I’ve been told that doPDF works well too. Both are freely available.

After printing to PDF, the document is ready to travel via email, flash drive, or better yet, via the cloud through your free Dropbox folder. You can rest assured that your document will look exactly the same printed as on screen.

Unicode Fonts For Biblical Studies

No one font contains all possible glyphs. For this reason, it is still necessary to change fonts when changing languages. Below are some of the best free fonts available for typing in Greek, Hebrew, Coptic, and Transliteration.

Greek

SBL Greek | Windows | OSX | Linux
Far and away the best font for Greek (in my opinion) is the SBL Greek font. Apart from having a great looking Greek typeface (with full diacritics), the Roman face looks really nice too. In addition, it is put out by the Society of Biblical Literature, which means that it will likely become the standard in the field.

Gentium | Windows | OSX | Linux
Before SBL Greek came along, Gentium was one of the best options out there. Advertised as a “typeface for the nations,” Gentium contains much more than just Roman and Greek Unicode subsets. Gentium boasts 5,500 high quality glyphs including Cyrillic and the full range of IPA symbols, especially useful for transliteration.

New Athena Unicode | Windows | OSX | Linux
Distributed by the American Philological Association, New Athena Unicode, like SBL Greek, is made for academic use. It contains full polytonic Greek support as well as a full set of Coptic glyphs (with diacritics).

Hebrew and Aramaic

*Note, Mac OSX only properly sets consonantal Hebrew/Aramaic texts using the fonts below. This means that vowel pointing will not display properly in most word processors, including MS Word 2008 and 2011, OpenOffice and Pages. However, there is one notable exception to this, Mellel, which works wonderfully, though it does have a significant learning curve.

SBL Hebrew | Windows | OSX* | Linux*
Like SBL Greek, this font is put out by the Society of Biblical Literature. In my experience, it is unmatched in aesthetics and advanced features. The font contains all the Hebrew/Aramaic block-script characters (including final forms and contextual variants), as well as all Masoretic markings, punctuation, and cantillation symbols. If you are using Microsoft Office Word for Windows, I can’t recommend it enough.

Ezra SIL | Windows | OSX* | Linux*
Ezra SIL is distributed by SIL International and is designed to look and feel like the text in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. As with SBL Hebrew, the vowel pointing will only work well in MS Word for Windows or Mellel for OSX.

Coptic

New Athena Unicode | Windows | OSX | Linux
In addition to a full set of polytonic Greek glyphs, New Athena Unicode, contains a full set of Coptic glyphs (with diacritics), and is my font-of-choice for displaying Coptic text.

Antinoou | Windows | OSX | Linux
Probably a more sophisticated Coptic font than New Athena Unicode, Antinoou has a nice look (while perhaps not as clean) and great advanced features, including full support for Apple’s AAT system.

Transliteration

Gentium | Windows | OSX | Linux
Advertised as a “typeface for the nations,” Gentium contains much more than just Roman and Greek Unicode subsets. Gentium boasts 5,500 high quality glyphs including Cyrillic and the full range of IPA symbols, especially useful for transliteration.

Charis SIL | Windows | OSX | Linux
Distributed by SIL International, Charis SIL provides a nearly comprehensive character set useful for linguists. The font has been around for a while, but it does a good job.

Changing your Keyboard Layout

Most modern operating systems (OS) are readily capable of changing key layouts. Below are directions to install or access additional keyboard layouts in several popular OS’s:

Windows 7 / Vista

Adding a keyboard layout to Win7 is quite simple, though easier to show than to describe. The Logos Bible Software folks have put together a nice tutorial on their website for accomplishing this. While Windows 7 comes standard with a polytonic Greek keyboard, Logos has also made keyboard layouts for Biblical Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic, and Transliteration, all of which are freely available on their site. Additional Hebrew keyboard layouts are available an the SBL webpage.

Windows XP

For a nice how-to for adding keyboard layouts to Windows XP check out biblicalgreek.org. The page on Unicode input shows how to utilize the standard polytonic Greek keyboard that comes with WinXP as well as the GreekKeys software (see site for more details). Hebrew keyboard layouts can be found on the SBL website. For a Coptic layout, click here.

Mac OS X

As with Windows, OSX has a polytonic Greek keyboard layout available standard. Changing keyboard layouts is relatively simple, and instructions are readily available online. Installation of additional layouts is simple as well, just drop the “.keylayout” file into your “…/Library/Keyboard Layouts” folder, then reboot. Hebrew keyboard layouts are available through the SBL site. For Coptic, click here. For Syriac, click here.  For several other miscellaneous keyboard layouts, click here.