Information can be encoded into text of a printable document or other printed material. The text includes glyphs, where each glyph corresponds to a text character. Additional information can be encoded into the text by altering one or more of the glyphs to change a shape of the one or more of the glyphs, so that each of the altered glyphs still corresponds to the text character to which the glyph corresponded prior to alteration and the altered glyph further contains a portion of the additional information encoded by the changed shape.