Look-alike character
lookalike-characteron by defaultJapanese / English
A character that looks like an ordinary one but is a different one
Example
How to fix
Delete the character and type the ordinary one. Normalising the document to NFC also fixes it (NFKC for radicals).
Why it matters
A Kangxi radical (⼈ U+2F08) looks like the ordinary 人 and is another character; so is a CJK compatibility ideograph. A letter written as a base and a separate combining mark (e + U+0301, common in macOS file names and text copied from them) looks like é and is another sequence. Search, sorting, dictionaries and spelling checks all miss them, and the reader cannot see what to fix. They come from PDF copies and input methods. Code is checked too.
What it does not flag
Combinations with no single precomposed form (a variation selector after a character, an accent with no precomposed letter) and compatibility ideographs that Unicode keeps as their own characters (﨑) are not reported.
Turning it off or relaxing it
Technical details
- Layer
- L1
- Status
- stable
- Severity
- warning
- Languages
- Japanese and English
- Suited to
- business, technical, blog, legal, docs, academic, literature, speech
Levels
Set a level for this rule under rules in chaff.yaml. With nothing set, it runs at the level its genre gives it (see By genre below).
| strict | error |
|---|---|
| normal | warning |
| relaxed | info |
This rule has no limit to count to. A level sets how a finding is marked: relaxed keeps the finding and marks it a step lower.
By genre
- Runs by default in
- technical/spec, technical/readme, blog/tech, blog/essay, blog/owned-media, business/proposal, business/report, business/email, business/press-release, business/meeting-notes, legal/contract, legal/statute, legal/judgment, legal/patent, docs/manual, docs/faq, docs/glossary, academic/paper, literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play, speech/address, speech/transcript
Message
"{written}" ({code}) looks like "{usual}" but is another character
"{written}" ({code}) is a radical, not the ordinary "{usual}"
"{written}" ({code}) is a compatibility ideograph, not the ordinary "{usual}"
"{written}" is a letter and a separate mark ({code}), not the single letter "{usual}"
"{written}" writes the voicing mark as a separate character ({code}), not the single letter "{usual}"
Rewrite depth (chaff fix-plan --depth): light — words and sentences; the structure and the voice stay
Sources
This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/lookalike-character.yaml