Greek characters

Introduction

Greek characters crop up very often in academic proofreading, particularly in mathematical, scientific, historical and biblical works. Just like the roman alphabet, there are capital and lower case letters, and they can be augmented with accents and aspirational marks. It helps if you know the names of the letters, as not all word processors and email applications support Greek characters and you might have to spell them out.

Different typefaces will have different looks for their Greek and roman sets. This can cause confusion, especially for people who aren't used to seeing the Greek alphabet; to help, a serif (Times) and a sans-serif (Arial) set have been included. The differences are quite striking. Of course, there are many typefaces, so make sure you don't get them confused. Sometimes Greek characters can look very similar to roman ones; rho can resemble "p", upsilon "u" or italicised "v". Make sure you don't mix up your zetas and your xis – it's easily done.

The Greek alphabet

Serif font (Times New Roman)

Name	Small	Capital
alpha	α	Α
beta	β	Β
gamma	γ	Γ
delta	δ	Δ
epsilon	ε	Ε
zeta	ζ	Ζ
eta	η	Η
theta	θ	Θ
iota	ι	Ι
kappa	κ	Κ
lambda	λ	Λ
mu	μ	Μ
nu	ν	Ν
xi	ξ	Ξ
omicron	ο	Ο
pi	π	Π
rho	ρ	Ρ
sigma	σ or ς	Σ
tau	τ	Τ
upsilon	υ	Υ
phi	φ	Φ
chi	χ	Χ
psi	ψ	Ψ
omega	ω	Ω

Sans-serif font (Arial)

Name	Small	Capital
alpha	α	Α
beta	β	Β
gamma	γ	Γ
delta	δ	Δ
epsilon	ε	Ε
zeta	ζ	Ζ
eta	η	Η
theta	θ	Θ
iota	ι	Ι
kappa	κ	Κ
lambda	λ	Λ
mu	μ	Μ
nu	ν	Ν
xi	ξ	Ξ
omicron	ο	Ο
pi	π	Π
rho	ρ	Ρ
sigma	σ or ς	Σ
tau	τ	Τ
upsilon	υ	Υ
phi	φ	Φ
chi	χ	Χ
psi	ψ	Ψ
omega	ω	Ω

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