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 In literature, a character sketch, or character, is a rough-and-ready rendering and thumbnail portrayal of an individual, capturing, in brief, that person's physical characteristics, psychological attributes, and the like. The brief descriptions ...

or character, a literary description of a character type *

Game character (disambiguation) A game character is a person or any other entity acting in a game. Game character may also refer to: * Player character, a character or a role in tabletop and video games, who is controlled by a player, typically a protagonist of the game's plot ...

, 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 ''Charaktery'' (, ''Personalities'') is a monthly magazine published in Poland and covering psychology-related topics, such as relationships, mental health, the functioning of the brain, neuropsychology, emotions, overcoming addictions, depressio ...

'', a monthly magazine in Poland * '' Netflix Presents: The Characters'', an improvised sketch comedy show on Netflix

Sciences

Character (biology) A phenotypic trait, simply trait, or character state is a distinct variant of a phenotypic characteristic of an organism; it may be either inherited or determined environmentally, but typically occurs as a combination of the two.Lawrence, Elean ...

, 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) In mathematics, a characterization of an object is a set of conditions that, while different from the definition of the object, is logically equivalent to it. To say that "Property ''P'' characterizes object ''X''" is to say that not only does ''X ...

, the logical equivalency between objects of two different domains. *

Character theory In mathematics, more specifically in group theory, the character of a group representation is a function on the group that associates to each group element the trace of the corresponding matrix. The character carries the essential information about ...

, the mathematical theory of special kinds of characters associated to group representations *

Dirichlet character In analytic number theory and related branches of mathematics, a complex-valued arithmetic function \chi:\mathbb\rightarrow\mathbb is a Dirichlet character of modulus m (where m is a positive integer) if for all integers a and b: :1) \chi ...

, a type of character in number theory *

Multiplicative character In mathematics, a multiplicative character (or linear character, or simply character) on a group ''G'' is a group homomorphism from ''G'' to the multiplicative group of a field , usually the field of complex numbers. If ''G'' is any group, then the ...

, a homomorphism from a group to the multiplicative subgroup of a field

Morality and social science

Character education Character education is an umbrella term loosely used to describe the teaching of children and adults in a manner that will help them develop variously as moral, civic, good, mannered, behaved, non-bullying, healthy, critical, successful, traditiona ...

, a US term for values education *

Character structure A character structure is a system of secondary traits manifested in the specific ways that an individual relates and reacts to others, to various kinds of stimuli, and to the environment. A child whose nurture and/or education cause them to hav ...

, 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 character is a semiotic sign or symbol, or a glyph typically a letter, a numerical digit, an ideogram, a hieroglyph, a punctuation mark or another typographic mark. History The Ancient Greek word ('charaktīr') is an agent noun of the ver ...

, 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 Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...

, a written language symbol (sinogram) used in Chinese, Japanese, and other languages

Other uses

Character (income tax) Character is the type of income to calculate the taxpayer's tax liability. In the United States, the Supreme Court decided ( Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co.) that income is an accession to wealth, however capital gain is of different charact ...

, a type of income for tax purposes in the US *

Sacramental character According to some Christian denominations, a sacramental character is an indelible spiritual ''mark'' (the meaning of the word ''character'' in Latin) imprinted by any of three of the seven sacraments: baptism, confirmation, and holy orders. ...

, a Catholic teaching *

Neighbourhood character Neighbourhood character refers to the 'look and feel of an area', in particular a residential area. It also includes the activities that occur there. In everyday usage, it can often be synonymous with local character, residential character, urban ch ...

, the look and feel of a built environment