Character or Characters may refer to:

Arts, entertainment, and media

Literature

* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to Theophrastus

Music

* ''Characters'' (John Abercrombie album), 1977 * ''Character'' (Dark Tranquillity album), 2005 * ''Character'' (Julia Kent album), 2013 * ''Character'' (Rachael Sage album), 2020 * ''Characters'' (Stevie Wonder album), 1987

Types of entity

Character (arts) In fiction, a character (or speaker, in poetry) is a person or other being in a narrative (such as a novel, play, radio or television series, music, film, or video game). The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life person, i ...

, an agent within a work of art, including literature, drama, cinema, opera, etc. * Character sketch or character, a literary description of a character type * Game character (disambiguation), various types of characters in a video game or role playing game **

Player character A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...

, as above but who is controlled or whose actions are directly chosen by a player **

Non-player character A non-player character (NPC), or non-playable character, is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster o ...

, as above but not player-controlled, frequently abbreviated as NPC

Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media

* ''Character'' (film), a 1997 Dutch film based on Bordewijk's novel * '' Charaktery'', a monthly magazine in Poland * '' Netflix Presents: The Characters'', an improvised sketch comedy show on Netflix

Sciences

* Character (biology), the abstraction of an observable physical or biochemical trait of an organism

Mathematics

Character (mathematics) In mathematics, a character is (most commonly) a special kind of function from a group to a field (such as the complex numbers). There are at least two distinct, but overlapping meanings. Other uses of the word "character" are almost always qualifie ...

, a homomorphism from a group to a field * Characterization (mathematics), the logical equivalency between objects of two different domains. * Character theory, the mathematical theory of special kinds of characters associated to group representations * Dirichlet character, a type of character in number theory * Multiplicative character, a homomorphism from a group to the multiplicative subgroup of a field

Morality and social science

* Character education, a US term for values education * Character structure, a person's traits *

Moral character Moral character or character (derived from charaktêr) is an analysis of an individual's steady moral qualities. The concept of ''character'' can express a variety of attributes, including the presence or lack of virtues such as empathy, coura ...

, an evaluation of a particular individual's durable moral qualities

Symbols

* Character (symbol), a sign or symbol **

Character (computing) In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural lan ...

, a unit of information roughly corresponding to a grapheme ** Chinese characters, a written language symbol (sinogram) used in Chinese, Japanese, and other languages

Other uses

* Character (income tax), a type of income for tax purposes in the US * Sacramental character, a Catholic teaching * Neighbourhood character, the look and feel of a built environment