Skippers look to be a cross between a moth and a butterfly. Some Skippers are so close to certain moth varieties that many can't visually tell them apart. Skippers, however, are active during the day like butterflies. There are two features define skippers from other butterflies. The first is the antenna: the club at the tip is drawn out and bent backwards into a small hook, the apiculus, which no other butterfly family has. The second is the build — a thick, muscular thorax, a head as wide as the thorax, widely spaced antennal bases and short, triangular wings.

For most of the twentieth century field guides placed skippers in a superfamily of their own, Hesperioidea, set apart from the "true butterflies" of the Papilionoidea. The current classification recognizes them simply as one of the butterfly families.

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