How to check Portuguese accents in a font

The essential Portuguese set

Portuguese needs more than the basic A–Z alphabet. Accented vowels, the cedilla, punctuation and correctly mapped Unicode characters are necessary for ordinary writing. Uppercase forms matter too, especially in headings and names.

• á à â ã and uppercase equivalents
• é ê and uppercase equivalents
• í ó ô õ ú
• ç and Ç
• Portuguese quotation and punctuation needs

A visible accent is not enough

A designer can draw an accent but map it incorrectly, or omit the precomposed character used by common applications. A real file inspection checks Unicode mapping, not merely whether a similar shape appears somewhere in the font.

Test real words

Try words such as coração, informação, avó, avô, Póvoa and português. Trusted Free Fonts labels verified Portuguese coverage and links to the full searchable glyph map so missing characters can be found before a project begins.

Test European and Brazilian Portuguese text

A useful test string should contain lowercase and uppercase accents, the cedilla, ordinals, quotation marks, currency and common punctuation. Names and place names reveal problems that an alphabet strip can miss. Try phrases containing Póvoa, coração, órgão, ação, avó, avô, bênção, português, INFORMAÇÃO and Ç, then add numerals and the euro sign when the project needs them.

Check every style that will be delivered. A Regular style may be complete while an Italic or decorative alternate is missing a precomposed character. Also compare spacing around quotation marks, apostrophes, hyphens and accented capitals at the real text size.

Unicode mapping and combining accents

Portuguese text normally uses correctly mapped Unicode characters. Some software can compose a base letter and a combining accent, but that does not excuse a font that omits the common precomposed forms or positions marks badly. Copy real text from a trusted source into the preview so the test follows normal typing and encoding.

If a character falls back to another font, its weight, serif shape or stroke contrast may change subtly. Disable fallback when testing or inspect the glyph map directly. Report a coverage label only after the mapped characters render from the verified font file.

• Verify á à â ã é ê í ó ô õ ú ç and uppercase forms.
• Check º and ª when names, dates or addresses need them.
• Test Regular, Bold and Italic separately.
• Look for fallback, misplaced marks and uneven sidebearings.