Lookalike letters
CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IE (U+0435)
The Cyrillic letter ie, drawn exactly like a Latin e.
- Codepoint
U+0435- Category
- Lookalike letters
- Removed by default
- No
- Governing option
- Lookalike letters
--confusables - Can be load-bearing
- No
Where it comes from
Cyrillic text; and in Latin words, from mixed keyboard layouts or deliberate substitution.
Why it matters
E is the most common letter in English, so it is the most productive target for a homoglyph swap — one substitution per word is almost always available.
Before and after
One letter from another alphabet, and the word no longer matches itself.
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 other Cyrillic-script languages.
How to remove it
Turn on Lookalike letters (`--confusables`); it becomes Latin "e".
Is it an AI watermark?
Not a watermark
No. A swapped e is a human intervention — filter evasion, spoofing, or a stego payload — not a model artefact.
No connection to machine-generated text. It comes from software, from a keyboard, or from a person.
Questions
Is this how moderation filters get bypassed?
It is one of the ways. A banned word with one Cyrillic letter is a different string, so a literal blocklist misses it while a reader does not.
Does normalisation fix it?
No. NFC and NFKC do not map Cyrillic letters to Latin ones — they are genuinely different letters. Only an explicit confusables mapping changes them.
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.