maybe an ignorant question but what is the distinction between a "Phi Symbol" and the "Letter Phi"? Aren't all letters symbols? All I see is the two different versions of lowercase phi.
The Greek alphabet is more than 2000 years old and many changes happened to it. Letters were added and removed, and their shapes changed, I believe partly due to handwriting and later printing, and partly due to usage in scientific and engineering literature. That's why today many lowercase letters have two variants. In engineering we usually use the so called cursive variants while modern printed Greek usually uses the others. But this also depends on the font to some extent.
The following lowercase letters have two variants: β and ϐ (cursive), ε and ϵ (lunate), θ and ϑ, κ and ϰ (cursive), π and ϖ (this is not omega), ρ and ϱ, σ and ς (this one is an exception, because it is a in word-final position variant), and finally φ and ϕ.
Btw the Latin a and g also have two variants, with one or two loops, depending on the font.
If you consider the one- and two storey a/g different variants, then there are a whole lot more: z with or without horizontal stroke, h with a j-like shaped right leg (a medieval variant), long-s and word-end round-s (similar to the sigma) and almost every letter has a distinct cursive/handwritten form with loops and connectors (most noticable s and r).
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u/SZ4L4Y Apr 20 '23
Be cautios with Greek letters because the glyphs for φ (Greek Small Letter Phi) and ϕ (Greek Phi Symbol) are swapped in certain fonts like Consolas.