《太平广记》引用了《酉阳杂俎》中的大量故事，通过以其中引《酉阳杂俎·诺皋记》的内容为例进行文字异文研究，主要分为异体字、古今字、通假字和正俗字四个部分。在异体字方面，《太平广记》常呈现出两字混用又略有不同的复杂现象；在古今字方面，《太平广记》古今皆有，但更常用今字；在通假字方面，《太平广记》用字尽量规避通假，更追求准确的倾向；在正俗字方面，《太平广记》用字多选正体。

Taiping Guangji cited numerous stories from Youyang Zazu. By taking the cited Youyang Zazu Nuogao Ji as an example, the variant characters can be divided into three parts: variant characters, ancient and new characters, substitute characters, and regular and popular characters. For variant characters, Taiping Guangji often presented a complicated usage where two words are interchangeable and slightly different; for ancient and new characters, Taiping Guangji had both ancient and new characters, but the new characters were adopted more frequently; for substitute characters, Taiping Guangji tended to avoid such characters and pursued accuracy; for regular and popular characters, Taiping Guangji tended to use regular characters.