Cipher methods Symbols
Symbol (Greek font)
Symbol is one of the 13 canonical PostScript fonts (Adobe, 1984-1985). Designed by Brian Reid at Adobe and later adopted by Microsoft, it maps the Greek alphabet and a set of mathematical symbols onto Latin ASCII codes: typing A displays Α, b displays β, S displays Σ, and so on.
For three decades, Symbol was the standard font for inserting a Greek letter into Word, Excel or TeX before the dedicated Unicode blocks (U+0370..U+03FF) became widely supported. It still shows up in every old scientific PDF from the 1990s-2000s. 26 Latin letters remapped to Greek + 4 punctuation marks (! ? . ,); codes 48-57 stay as plain Arabic digits (no special glyph).
How does the alphabet work?
The cipher relies on a monoalphabetic substitution: each Latin letter is replaced by its Greek counterpart in the Symbol font. Exactly the Caesar cipher mechanic (~50 BC), except the “key” is the Greek alphabet rather than a numeric shift.
The table covers 26 letters + 4 punctuation marks (! ? . ,). No digits: codes 48-57 display normal Arabic numerals in Symbol, so we leave them as-is. Since the Greek alphabet only has 24 letters, two mathematical glyphs (∨, ∼) fill in V and W.
Cryptographic strength: low. In practice it’s a Greek ↔ Latin transliteration table with a mathematical varnish. No real cryptographic value, but excellent pedagogy for anyone learning to read the Greek alphabet or to parse mathematical notation.
Historical and modern usage
- Word / Excel / TeX — historical insertion of Greek letters.
- Old scientific PDFs — papers from the 1990s-2000s.
- Maths pedagogy — learning the Greek alphabet.
- Retro branding — nod to PostScript-era interfaces.
Related variants
- Wingdings (1990) — see our entry, another decorative font family.
- Webdings (1997) — see our entry, web pictograms.
- ITC Zapf Dingbats (1978) — see our entry, canonical PostScript ornaments.
What are the weaknesses?
- Monoalphabetic substitution — frequency analysis is immediate.
- Obvious transliteration — Α looks like A, Β like B, Μ like M…
- No digits — to encode a number, write it out in words.
The 30 glyphs
