Apsyeoxic

Two words that appear to be spelled identically but are actually sequences of characters from different scripts are said to be apsyeoxic /æpsiˈaːksɪk/. This term is derived from the graphic similarity between the string of Roman letters "apsyeoxic" and the visually confusable string of Cyrillic letters "арѕуеохіс". The term is sometimes incorrectly applied to the comparison of individual characters. An infrequently encountered but nonetheless preferable alternative when discussing pairs of individual characters is homoglyph.

The proximal appearance of text in different scripts is a matter of particular concern in the increasing internationalization of the Internet. This applies both to material appearing, for example, on Web sites, and in the corresponding resource identifiers. The visual confusion of two character sequences from separate scripts, or the gratuitous comingling of characters from different scripts can cause difficulty in the location and retrieval of a desired resource. This can also be deliberately exploited toward deceptive ends. Devising means for preventing the apsyeoxic overlap of autonomous resource identifiers is therefore a focus of special effort in the development of the protocol that supports Internationalized domain names.

External links

RFC 4690 (Review and Recommendations for Internationalized Domain Names)