Manga Fonts and Accented Letters: Check Before You Typeset

A lot of comic and manga fonts only contain the basic English alphabet. If you typeset in Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Polish, Vietnamese, Turkish or most other languages, you will eventually hit a letter the font does not have. The fix is simple: test every font against your language's characters before it goes into your series font set, and make the whole team use the same tested files.

This guide explains why the problem exists, what it looks like when it slips through, and how to set up a font set that does not break.

Why so many comic fonts lack accented letters

A font is a set of drawn shapes called glyphs, one for each character it supports. Every glyph is work for the designer. A comic font is often a hand-lettered style, so each accented capital and lowercase letter has to be drawn, positioned and spaced by hand, then tested against every other letter.

Many comic fonts were made for the English-language comics market, where none of that is needed. Others cover Western European accents (é, ñ, ü) but stop before Central European letters (ą, ł, ő), Turkish (ğ, ş, ı, İ) or Vietnamese, which stacks two marks on one letter (ặ, ở, ữ).

So "this font supports accents" is not a yes-or-no answer. It supports some accents. Which ones is what you need to check.

What happens when a glyph is missing

Missing glyphs rarely produce an error message. Depending on the software and the situation, you get one of these:

An empty box or blank space

Some programs draw a placeholder box (often called "tofu") or nothing at all. At least this is visible, if someone looks.

A silent fallback font

Many programs quietly draw the missing letter in a different font. The word looks almost right, but one letter is thinner, taller or a different style. On a page full of hand-lettered dialogue, a single smooth system-font "ş" or "ã" stands out to readers even when the typesetter did not notice.

A mixed look across the chapter

If some bubbles avoid the missing letters and some do not, the chapter ends up with an inconsistent texture. QC may catch one, but rarely all.

The file breaks on another machine

Your PSD stores the text and the font name, not the font itself. When the next person opens the file:

• If they do not have the font, the software warns about missing fonts and may substitute another the moment they edit a layer.
• If they have a different version of a font with the same name, the text may reflow, change size, or lose letters that your version had.

This is why "it looked fine on my computer" is the most common sentence in font problems.

How to test a font for your language

1. List the characters your language needs

Write down every letter your language uses beyond A–Z, in both cases. Do not forget punctuation:

Language	Letters to check (examples)	Punctuation to check
Spanish	á é í ó ú ñ ü, and capitals	¿ ¡ « »
Portuguese	ã õ á â à ç é ê í ó ô ú, and capitals	« »
French	é è ê ë à â ç î ï ô ù û ü ÿ œ æ, and capitals	« » and the narrow spaces your style uses
German	ä ö ü ß, Ä Ö Ü, and capital ẞ if your style uses it	„ “ ‚ ‘
Polish	ą ć ę ł ń ó ś ź ż, and capitals	„ ”
Vietnamese	ă â đ ê ô ơ ư plus every tone combination (ạ ặ ở ữ …)
Turkish	ç ğ ı İ ö ş ü, and capitals

These lists are a starting point. Your translators know which characters actually show up in your scripts; ask them, and add anything unusual from character names and glossary terms.

2. Test the font against the list

The free font character checker loads a font file in your browser, checks it against your language's character set, and shows exactly which letters are missing. It also previews sample lettering so you can judge how the accented letters look, not just whether they exist.

You can also test by hand: type your full character list into a text layer in your editor, set it in the font, and compare it letter by letter against the same text in a font you know is complete. This catches fallback substitution, which is easy to miss at small sizes.

3. Check how the letters look, not only whether they exist

A font can contain a glyph that is still unusable:

• Accent placement. Marks that sit too high, too far to one side, or collide with the letter.
• Capitals with accents. In all-caps lettering, accented capitals are taller. With tight line spacing, an accent on one line can touch the letters above it.
• Spacing (kerning). Accented letters sometimes have poor spacing next to certain neighbours.
• Weights and styles. The regular weight may have every letter while the bold or italic does not. Test every style you plan to use.

Set a few real sentences from your scripts in each style, at the size you typeset at, and read them.

4. Check case conversion

If your series uses all caps, check what your software's All Caps option does with your language. Some special case pairs, such as Turkish i to İ and ı to I, or the German ß, may not convert the way your language expects. If they come out wrong, type the capitals yourself instead of relying on the button.

Bad workarounds and good fixes

Workarounds that cause more trouble

• Dropping the accents. Writing "s" for "ş" or "n" for "ñ" changes meaning in some words and reads as careless in all of them.
• Drawing accents as separate shapes. A dot or mark on its own layer does not move when the text reflows, and the next typesetter will not know it is there.
• Mixing in another font for the missing letters only. Different stroke, height and style, letter by letter. Readers see it.
• Rasterising the text to hide the problem. QC can no longer fix typos without retyping the bubble.
• "Just this once." Exceptions become the standard on a deadline night.

Fixes that last

1. Choose a font that covers your language. If a favourite font fails, look for a similar style that passes. Fonts with broad coverage exist in most comic styles; the checker makes comparing candidates quick.
2. Look for an extended version. Some designers offer a separate edition or a newer version with wider language support. Check the designer's own page.
3. Use a pairing that was designed together. If your dialogue font family is complete but your shout font is not, swap the shout font for a heavier weight of the dialogue family.
4. Modify the font only as a last resort, and only if its licence explicitly allows modification. Editing a font is skilled work, and a modified font has to be distributed to every team member as a separate, clearly named file.

Standardising a font set across the team

Most font problems in groups are not about one bad font. They are about different people using different files.

Build a series font set

For each series, write down:

• Which font is used for each role (dialogue, thoughts, shouting, narration, SFX).
• The exact file name and version of each font.
• The base sizes and styles, if your group records them.
• When the set was last tested, and against which language.

Store the files in one shared place

Every typesetter installs fonts from the same shared location, not from wherever they found a copy. When a font is updated, the old file is replaced there and the team is told. That way a PSD opened by any member uses the same version that created it.

Test before adding

Make "passes the character check in our language, in every style we use" a condition for joining the series set. It takes a few minutes and saves fixing a chapter later.

Onboard new typesetters with the set

A new typesetter's first task should include installing the series fonts from the shared store. The recruitment and tryouts guide covers onboarding in more detail.

Do not forget licences

Before a font goes into a shared set, check its licence on the font's own page or the designer's site. Licences differ: some allow free personal use only, some require a purchase for wider use, some restrict redistribution or modification. A shared team folder can count as redistribution under some licences. Read the actual licence text rather than relying on the label on a download page.

Common mistakes

• Testing only the regular weight. Bold and italic are separate files and often have different coverage.
• Testing only lowercase. Capitals with accents are where many fonts stop.
• Assuming a font from a big font list is complete. Coverage varies within the same collection.
• Trusting the preview. A fallback font can make a missing letter look present.
• Fonts installed from different sources. Same name, different versions, different results.
• No record of which font a series uses. When the original typesetter leaves, the knowledge leaves with them.
• Ignoring the licence. Check it on the font's own page.

Checklist

• Character list for your language written down, both cases, with punctuation
• Every candidate font tested with the font character checker
• Every style (regular, bold, italic) tested separately
• Accented capitals checked with your real line spacing
• All Caps conversion checked, or capitals typed manually
• Series font set documented: role, file, version
• Fonts stored in one shared place
• Licence checked on each font's own page

Where this fits

Font testing happens once per series, before the first chapter reaches typesetting. The full typesetting process is in how to typeset manga and webtoons. FansubPanel keeps a shared font library where each series lists its own fonts, so every typesetter installs the same files and a new member does not have to ask which font was used for shouting in chapter 3.