Unicode characters not displaying in XeTeX

Question

I am trying to get Unicode characters to compile into a PDF file using XeLaTeX. My MWE looks like this:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\begin{document}

Here is α, β, and finally γ.

\end{document}

When I compile to PDF I get

Here is , , and finally .

My Unicode characters do not show up. Could anyone point out my problem?

Answer 1

The default font, Computer Modern Roman, just does not have the glyphs for these Unicode characters. There are several possibilities to point out:

Math symbols

If the intended use of the characters is as shortcuts for \alpha, \beta, etc., then use the newunicodechar package:

\usepackage{newunicodechar}

\newunicodechar{α}{\alpha}
...

Internationalised typesetting

If you're looking to typeset a document (or part of a document) in the Greek language, use the polyglossia package:

\usepackage{polyglossia}

\setotherlanguage{greek}
\newfontfamily\greekfont[Script=Greek,Ligatures=TeX]{Times New Roman} % Has Greek characters

...

\begin{greek} ελληνικά \end{greek}

Random usage

If you need these characters for occasional use in the normal text, you can also use the fontspec package without polyglossia to load a font that has the glyphs. You can do it either globally (change the font altogether) or just for these characters:

\usepackage{fontspec}

\newfontfamily\timesfont[Ligatures=TeX]{Times New Roman}

...

The Greek letter alpha follows: {\timesfont α}