: What font should I use to write alien language? In my story, I'm using the font WingDings to represent the language for the alien race. Should I be using something different or am I ok with

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This isn't a hard rule, but generally, if I do not want the reader to know what is being said by the aliens, I tend to just say they are conversing in an unknown language. If I want their dialog to be understood by the reader, but not the characters, I'd use dialog in "" format, and add somewhere which language is being spoken. This is from a comic book writing style which would contain an editorial note about the language actually being spoken.

The problem with using actual foreign languages in written words is that the reader needs to understand everything from the POV you've selected. Alien gibberish in gibberish languages is difficult to read as you now have long chuncks of dialog that are unintelligent. D.C. Comincs does pull this off from time to time as they have two substitution cyphers that represent Kryptonian and Interlac. These alphabets have a one to one correspondence to the Latin Alphabet, and are still using English words (though it's implied it sounds nothing like English). These are used either to show the two characters in scene do not know what's going on OR that one character is swearing in their native tongue (often a real swear word that often isn't kosher if it used the English Language.). They don't dialog for extended lengths of time in this manner. These ciphers are also definately copyrighted, but you could make your own alphabet and draw the symbols. Pretty sure you can then make your own font.

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[Not a lawyer], but even so I don't think copyright is the biggest potential issue.

You could go the whole hog and invent a character set (as Iain M. Banks did for the "Culture" series (http://omniglot.com/conscripts/marain.htm)), or represent the spelling with standard Roman characters. The important question is whether, and if so how, you're expecting your readers to be able to interpret the symbols.

And here's the pitfall - some readers will want to do that, and they're likely to feel cheated if they can't, or if the alien language is nothing more than a transposition into a commonly known character set. These will be the readers who have most invested themselves in your work, so are probably those you least want to lose or disappoint.

I wouldn't use WingDings. The exception to this is if the story's logic holds, and there is some reason the alien race adopted WingDings, or that they were the inspiration for the person on Earth who created that character set. Otherwise, it could end up looking like a bit of a shortcut.

Qapla'.

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