Lookalike letters
CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A (U+0430)
The Cyrillic letter a. In almost every font it is drawn identically to the Latin letter a, and it is a completely different codepoint.
- Codepoint
U+0430- Also written as
u0430\u0430а- Category
- Lookalike letters
- Removed by default
- No
- Governing option
- Lookalike letters
--confusables - Can be load-bearing
- No
Copy and paste U+0430
To copy and paste CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A (U+0430), press the button: the character itself goes to your clipboard, and Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac) pastes it anywhere you can type.
Where it comes from
Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Serbian text, obviously. In Latin words it comes from a Cyrillic keyboard layout left on, from a copy-paste out of mixed text, and from deliberate substitution: domain spoofing, filter evasion, and homoglyph steganography, which encodes bits by swapping Latin letters for lookalikes.
Why it matters
A single swapped letter defeats every exact-match check while remaining invisible to the reader. It is how "pаypal.com" gets registered, how a banned word slips past a filter, and how a hidden bit gets stored in a word.
Before and after
One Cyrillic letter in an otherwise Latin word. The rendering is identical; the string is not.
The character is shown as a labelled chip so you can see where it sits. In your text it draws nothing at all.
When it is legitimate
In Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian and every other language written in Cyrillic, which is to say in a very large amount of perfectly ordinary text.
How to remove it
Turn on Lookalike letters (`--confusables`) and it is replaced with Latin "a", but only inside a mixed-script word, one that also contains an ASCII letter or digit, like "аpple" or "pаypal". In a word that is all Cyrillic it is neither reported nor touched, so ordinary Russian text survives the option. It stays opt-in regardless, because it rewrites letters you can see.
Working in a file rather than a paste? The document report for .docx, .odt and .html finds it inside the file, together with hidden runs and tracked changes, without you having to open it. If the question is what the rest of the writing does rather than what this one character does, count the tell words and phrases per thousand words and see where each habit sits, with no score and no claim about who wrote the text.
Is it an AI watermark?
Not a watermark
No. A Cyrillic letter in a Latin word is either a keyboard artefact or a deliberate substitution by a person. Language models do not insert homoglyphs as marks; they produce them only when the surrounding text is genuinely Cyrillic.
No connection to machine-generated text. It comes from software, from a keyboard, or from a person.
Questions
Is this how lookalike domains work?
Yes. An internationalised domain name can contain Cyrillic letters that render like Latin ones. Browsers defend against this by showing the punycode form when a name mixes scripts.
Will `--confusables` destroy Russian text?
No. It only rewrites a lookalike that sits inside a mixed-script word: a run of letters that also contains an ASCII letter or digit, like "Miсrosoft". Ordinary Russian, Greek or Armenian prose has no such word in it, so nothing there is changed, or even reported. It is still off by default, because in a mixed word it does rewrite a letter you can see.
How do I find them without changing anything?
Reveal the text rather than cleaning it. Every confusable is listed with its position, its codepoint and the Latin letter it imitates, and nothing is modified.
Check your own text
Paste anything into the cleaner to see every hidden character it contains, with position, codepoint and what happens to each one. Nothing is uploaded.
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