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In
writing Writing is the act of creating a persistent representation of language. A writing system includes a particular set of symbols called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which they encode a particular spoken language. Every written language ...
and
typography Typography is the art and technique of Typesetting, arranging type to make written language legibility, legible, readability, readable and beauty, appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, Point (typogra ...
, a ligature occurs where two or more
grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived from Ancient Greek ('write'), and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other emic units. The study of graphemes ...
s or letters are joined to form a single
glyph A glyph ( ) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A ...
. Examples are the characters and used in English and French, in which the letters and are joined for the first ligature and the letters and are joined for the second ligature. For stylistic and legibility reasons, and are often merged to create (where the
tittle The tittle or superscript dot is the dot on top of lowercase ''i'' and ''j''. In English writing the tittle is a diacritic which only appears as part of these glyphs, but diacritic dots can appear over other letters in various languages. In mos ...
on the merges with the hood of the ); the same is true of and to create . The common
ampersand The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the grammatical conjunction, conjunction "and". It originated as a typographic ligature, ligature of the letters of the word (Latin for "and"). Etymology Tradi ...
, , developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters and (spelling ,
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
for 'and') were combined.


History

The earliest known script
Sumerian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform scripts are marked by and ...
and
Egyptian ''Egyptian'' describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of year ...
hieratic Hieratic (; ) is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BCE ...
both include many cases of character combinations that gradually evolve from ligatures into separately recognizable characters. Other notable ligatures, such as the
Brahmic The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...
abugida An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit ...
s and the Germanic
bind rune A bind rune or bindrune () is a Migration Period Germanic typographic ligature, ligature of two or more Runic alphabet, runes. They are extremely rare in Viking Age inscriptions, but are common in earlier (Proto-Norse) and later (medieval) inscri ...
, figure prominently throughout ancient manuscripts. These new glyphs emerge alongside the proliferation of writing with a stylus, whether on
paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, Textile, rags, poaceae, grasses, Feces#Other uses, herbivore dung, or other vegetable sources in water. Once the water is dra ...
or
clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impuriti ...
, and often for a practical reason: faster
handwriting Handwriting in Italian schools (XXth - XXIst century) Handwriting is the personal and unique style of writing with a writing instrument, such as a pen or pencil in the hand. Handwriting includes both block and cursive styles and is separa ...
. Merchants especially needed a way to speed up the process of written communication and found that conjoining letters and abbreviating words for lay use was more convenient for record keeping and transaction than the bulky long forms. Around the 9th and 10th centuries, monasteries became a fountainhead for these types of script modifications. Medieval scribes who wrote in
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
increased their writing speed by combining characters and by introducing notational abbreviations. Others conjoined letters for aesthetic purposes. For example, in
blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter or black-letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule or Gothic type, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for ...
, letters with right-facing bowls (, , and ) and those with left-facing bowls (, , , , and ) were written with the facing edges of the bowls superimposed. In many script forms, characters such as , , and had their vertical strokes superimposed. Scribes also used notational abbreviations to avoid having to write a whole character in one stroke. Manuscripts in the fourteenth century employed hundreds of such abbreviations. In
handwriting Handwriting in Italian schools (XXth - XXIst century) Handwriting is the personal and unique style of writing with a writing instrument, such as a pen or pencil in the hand. Handwriting includes both block and cursive styles and is separa ...
, a ligature is made by joining two or more characters in an atypical fashion by merging their parts, or by writing one above or inside the other. In printing, a ligature is a group of characters that is typeset as a unit, so the characters do not have to be joined. For example, in some cases the ligature prints the letters and with a greater separation than when they are typeset as separate letters. When printing with movable type was invented around 1450, typefaces included many ligatures and additional letters, as they were based on handwriting. Ligatures made printing with movable type easier because one
sort Sort may refer to: * Sorting, any process of arranging items in sequence or in sets ** Sorting algorithm, any algorithm for ordering a list of elements ** Mainframe sort merge, sort utility for IBM mainframe systems ** Sort (Unix), which sorts the ...
would replace frequent combinations of letters and also allowed more complex and interesting character designs which would otherwise collide with one another. Because of their complexity, ligatures began to fall out of use in the 20th century. Sans serif typefaces, increasingly used for body text, generally avoid ligatures, though notable exceptions include
Gill Sans Gill Sans is a Sans-serif#Humanist, humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype Imaging, Monotype in 1928. It is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Johnston (typeface), Underground Alphabet", t ...
and Futura. Inexpensive
phototypesetting Phototypesetting is a method of Typesetting, setting type which uses photography to make columns of Sort (typesetting), type on a scroll of photographic paper. It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publ ...
machines in the 1970s (which did not require
journeyman A journeyman is a worker, skilled in a given building trade or craft, who has successfully completed an official apprenticeship qualification. Journeymen are considered competent and authorized to work in that field as a fully qualified employee ...
knowledge or training to operate) also generally avoid them. A few, however, became characters in their own right, see below the sections about
German ß German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
, various Latin accented letters, & et al. The trend against digraph use was further strengthened by the
desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using dedicated software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online co ...
revolution. Early computer software in particular had no way to allow for ligature substitution (the automatic use of ligatures where appropriate), while most new digital typefaces did not include ligatures. As most of the early PC development was designed for the English language (which already treated ligatures as optional at best) dependence on ligatures did not carry over to digital. Ligature use fell as the number of traditional hand compositors and
hot metal typesetting In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mo ...
machine operators dropped because of the mass production of the IBM Selectric brand of electric typewriter in 1961. A designer active in the period commented: "some of the world's greatest typefaces were quickly becoming some of the world's worst fonts." Ligatures have grown in popularity in the 21st century because of an increasing interest in creating typesetting systems that evoke arcane designs and classical scripts. One of the first computer typesetting programs to take advantage of computer-driven typesetting (and later laser printers) was
Donald Knuth Donald Ervin Knuth ( ; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of comp ...
's
TeX Tex, TeX, TEX, may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname * Tex Earnhardt (1930–2020), U.S. businessman * Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer ...
program. Now the standard method of mathematical typesetting, its default fonts are explicitly based on nineteenth-century styles. Many new fonts feature extensive ligature sets; these include
FF Scala FF Scala is an old-style serif typeface designed by Dutch typeface designer Martin Majoor in 1991 for the Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The FF Scala font family was named for the Teatro alla Scala (1776–78) in Milan, ...
, Seria and others by
Martin Majoor Martin Majoor (born 14 October 1960) is a Dutch type designer and graphic designer. As of 2006, he had worked since 1997 in both Arnhem, Netherlands, and Warsaw, Poland. Biography Early life Majoor was born in 1960 in the town of Baarn, in th ...
and
Hoefler Text Hoefler Text is an old-style serif font by Jonathan Hoefler released by Apple Computer Inc. (now Apple Inc.) in 1991 to showcase advanced type technologies. Intended as a versatile font that is suitable for body text, it takes cues from a range ...
by
Jonathan Hoefler Jonathan Hoefler (; born 1970) is an American type designer. Hoefler founded the Hoefler Type Foundry in 1989, a type foundry in New York. Early life Jonathan Hoefler was born on August 22, 1970, in New York City to Doreen Benjamin and Char ...
.
Mrs Eaves Mrs Eaves is a transitional serif typeface designed by Zuzana Licko in 1996. It is a variant of Baskerville, which was designed in Birmingham, England, in the 1750s. Mrs Eaves adapts Baskerville for use in display contexts, such as headings and b ...
by
Zuzana Licko Zuzana Licko (born Zuzana Ličko, 1961) is a Slovak-born American Type design, type designer and visual artist known for co-founding Emigre (type foundry), Emigre Fonts, a digital type foundry in Berkeley, California, Berkeley, CA. She has design ...
contains a particularly large set to allow designers to create dramatic display text with a feel of antiquity. A parallel use of ligatures is seen in the creation of script fonts that join letterforms to simulate handwriting effectively. This trend is caused in part by the increased support for other languages and alphabets in modern computing, many of which use ligatures somewhat extensively. This has caused the development of new digital typesetting techniques such as
OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. Derived from TrueType, it retains TrueType's basic structure but adds many intricate data structures for describing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corpora ...
, and the incorporation of ligature support into the text display systems of
macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
,
Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
, and applications like
Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...
. An increasing modern trend is to use a "Th" ligature which reduces spacing between these letters to make it easier to read, a trait infrequent in metal type. Today, modern font programming divides ligatures into three groups, which can be activated separately: standard, contextual and historical. Standard ligatures are needed to allow the font to display without errors such as character collision. Designers sometimes find contextual and historic ligatures desirable for creating effects or to evoke an old-fashioned print look.


Latin alphabet


Stylistic ligatures

Many ligatures combine with the following letter. A particularly prominent example is (or , rendered with two normal letters). The
tittle The tittle or superscript dot is the dot on top of lowercase ''i'' and ''j''. In English writing the tittle is a diacritic which only appears as part of these glyphs, but diacritic dots can appear over other letters in various languages. In mos ...
of the in many typefaces collides with the hood of the when placed beside each other in a word, and are combined into a single glyph with the tittle absorbed into the . Other ligatures with the letter f include , (), (), (), and (). In Linotype, ligature matrices for , , , , , , , , , , and for followed by a
full stop The full stop ( Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point is a punctuation mark used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation). A ...
,
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical; others give it the appearance of a miniature fille ...
, or
hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (en dash , em dash and others), which are wider, or with t ...
are optional in many typefaces, as well as the equivalent set for the doubled , as a method to overcome the machine's physical restrictions. These arose because with the usual type
sort Sort may refer to: * Sorting, any process of arranging items in sequence or in sets ** Sorting algorithm, any algorithm for ordering a list of elements ** Mainframe sort merge, sort utility for IBM mainframe systems ** Sort (Unix), which sorts the ...
for
lowercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing system ...
, the end of its hood is on a
kern Kern or KERN may refer to: People * Kern (surname), includes a list of people with the name * Kern (soldier), a light infantry unit in Medieval Irish armies Places * Kern, Alaska, a ghost town in Alaska * Kern, Austria, see Sankt Marienkir ...
, which would be damaged by collision with raised parts of the next letter. Ligatures crossing the
morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
boundary of a composite word are sometimes considered incorrect, especially in official
German orthography German orthography is the orthography used in writing the German language, which is largely phonemic. However, it shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of al ...
as outlined in the ''
Duden The Duden () is a dictionary of the Standard High German language, first published by Konrad Duden in 1880, and later by Bibliographisches Institut GmbH, which was merged into Cornelsen Verlag in 2022. The Duden is updated regularly with ...
''. An English example of this would be in ''shelfful''; a German example would be ("boat trip"). Some computer programs (such as
TeX Tex, TeX, TEX, may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname * Tex Earnhardt (1930–2020), U.S. businessman * Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer ...
) provide a setting to disable ligatures for German, while some users have also written macros to identify which ligatures to disable. Turkish distinguishes dotted and dotless "I". If a ligature with ''f'' were to be used in words such as
ven Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It comprises an area of , and its popul ...
and
dea The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating illicit drug trafficking and distribution within the U.S. It is the lead agency for domes ...
this contrast would be obscured. The ligature, at least in the form typical to other languages, is therefore not used in Turkish typography. Remnants of the ligatures / ("sharp s", ) and / ("sharp t", ) from
Fraktur Fraktur () is a calligraphic hand of the Latin alphabet and any of several blackletter typefaces derived from this hand. It is designed such that the beginnings and ends of the individual strokes that make up each letter will be clearly vis ...
, a family of German
blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter or black-letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule or Gothic type, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for ...
typefaces, originally mandatory in Fraktur but now employed only stylistically, can be seen to this day on street signs for city squares whose name contains or ends in . Instead, the "sz" ligature has merged into a single character, the German ß – see below. Sometimes, ligatures for (), (), , , , and are used (e.g. in the typeface
Linux Libertine Linux Libertine is a typeface released in 2003 by the Libertine Open Fonts Project, which aims to create FOSS, free and open alternatives to Proprietary software, proprietary typefaces such as Times New Roman. It was developed with the free font e ...
). Besides conventional ligatures, in the metal type era some newspapers commissioned custom condensed single sorts for the names of common long names that might appear in news headings, such as "
Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionar ...
", " Chamberlain". In these cases the characters did not appear combined, just more tightly spaced than if printed conventionally.


German ß

The
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
letter (, also called the , meaning ''sharp s'') is an official letter of the alphabet in Germany and Austria. A recognizable
ligature Ligature may refer to: Language * Ligature (writing), a combination of two or more letters into a single symbol (typography and calligraphy) * Ligature (grammar), a morpheme that links two words Medicine * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture us ...
representing the digraph develops in handwriting in the early 14th century. Its name (meaning S-Z) suggests a connection of "long s and z" (ſʒ) but the Latin script also knows a ligature of "long s over round s" (ſs). Since German was mostly set in blackletter typefaces until the 1940s, and those typefaces were rarely set in uppercase, a capital version of the never came into common use, even though its creation has been discussed since the end of the 19th century. Therefore, the common replacement in uppercase typesetting was originally SZ ( "measure" → , different from "mass" → ) and later SS ( → ). Until 2017, the SS replacement was the only valid spelling according to the official orthography in Germany and Austria. In Switzerland, the ß is omitted altogether in favour of ss. The capital version (ẞ) of the Eszett character was occasionally used since 1905/06, has been part of Unicode since 2008, and has appeared in more and more typefaces. Since the end of 2010, the has suggested the new upper case character for "ß" rather than replacing it with "SS" or "SZ" for geographical names. A new standardized German keyboard layout (DIN 2137-T2) has included the capital ß since 2012. The new character entered the official orthographic rules in June 2017.


Massachusett ꝏ

A prominent feature of the colonial orthography created by John Eliot (later used in the first Bible printed in the Americas, the Massachusett-language , published in 1663) was the use of the double-o ligature to represent the of ''food'' as opposed to the of ''hook'' (although Eliot himself used and interchangeably). In the orthography in use since 2000 in the
Wampanoag The Wampanoag, also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of the Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Northeastern Woodlands currently based in southeastern Massachusetts and forme ...
communities participating in the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project (WLRP), the ligature was replaced with the numeral , partly because of its ease in typesetting and display as well as its similarity to the o-u ligature used in
Abenaki The Abenaki ( Abenaki: ''Wαpánahki'') are Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was pred ...
. For example, compare the colonial-era spelling with the modern Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project (WLRP) spelling .


Letter W

As the letter is an addition to the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from ...
that originated in the seventh century, the phoneme it represents was formerly written in various ways. In
Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
, the runic letter
wynn Wynn or wyn (; also spelled wen, win, ƿynn, ƿyn, ƿen, and ƿin) is a letter of the Old English Latin alphabet, Old English alphabet, where it is used to represent the sound . History The letter "W" While the earliest Old English texts ...
) was used, but
Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 9th and 10th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norma ...
influence forced wynn out of use. By the 14th century, the "new" letter , originated as two glyphs or glyphs joined, developed into a legitimate letter with its own position in the alphabet. Because of its relative youth compared to other letters of the alphabet, only a few European languages (English, Dutch, German, Polish, Welsh, Maltese, and Walloon) use the letter in native words.


Æ and Œ

The character (lower case ; in ancient times named ) when used in Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, or
Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
is not a typographic ligature. It is a distinct
letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech or none in the case of a silent letter; any of the symbols of an alphabet * Letterform, the g ...
— a
vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
— and when collated, may be given a different place in the
alphabetical order Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is ...
than . In modern
English orthography English orthography comprises the set of rules used when writing the English language, allowing readers and writers to associate written graphemes with the sounds of spoken English, as well as other features of the language. English's orthograp ...
, is not considered an independent letter but a spelling variant, for example: " encyclopædia" versus "encyclopaedia" or "encyclopedia". In this use, comes from
Medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It was also the administrative language in the former Western Roman Empire, Roman Provinces of Mauretania, Numidi ...
, where it was an optional ligature in some specific words that had been transliterated and borrowed from Ancient Greek, for example, "Æneas". It is still found as a variant in English and French words descended or borrowed from Medieval Latin, but the trend has recently been towards printing the and separately. Similarly, and , while normally printed as ligatures in French, are replaced by component letters if technical restrictions require it.


Umlaut

In
German orthography German orthography is the orthography used in writing the German language, which is largely phonemic. However, it shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of al ...
, the umlauted vowels , , and historically arose from , , ligatures (strictly, from these vowels with a small letter written as a
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
, for example , , ). It is common practice to replace them with , , digraphs when the diacritics are unavailable, for example in electronic conversation. Phone books treat umlauted vowels as equivalent to the relevant digraph (so that a name Müller will appear at the same place as if it were spelled Mueller; German surnames have a strongly fixed orthography, either a name is spelled with or with ); however, the alphabetic order used in other books treats them as equivalent to the simple letters , and . The convention in
Scandinavian languages The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is al ...
and Finnish is different: there the umlaut vowels are treated as independent letters with positions at the end of the alphabet.


Middle English

In Middle English, the word ''the'' (written ''þe'') was frequently abbreviated as , a ( thorn) with a small written as a diacritic. Similarly, the word ''that'' was abbreviated to , a with a small written as a diacritic. During the latter Middle English and
Early Modern English Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviated EModEFor example, or EMnE) or Early New English (ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transit ...
periods, the thorn in its common script, or
cursive Cursive (also known as joined-up writing) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionality and m ...
, form came to resemble a shape. With the arrival of
movable type Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable Sort (typesetting), components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric charac ...
printing, the substitution of for became ubiquitous, leading to the common "''ye''", as in ' Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe'. One major reason for this was that existed in the printer's
types Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type, collection of values used for computations. * File type * TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file. * Ty ...
that
William Caxton William Caxton () was an English merchant, diplomat and writer. He is thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press into Kingdom of England, England in 1476, and as a Printer (publishing), printer to be the first English retailer ...
and his contemporaries imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, while did not.


Ring

The ''
ring (The) Ring(s) may refer to: * Ring (jewellery), a round band, usually made of metal, worn as ornamental jewelry * To make a sound with a bell, and the sound made by a bell Arts, entertainment, and media Film and TV * ''The Ring'' (franchise), a ...
''
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
used in vowels such as likewise originated as an -ligature. Before the replacement of the older "aa" with "å" became a practice, an "a" with another "a" on top (aͣ) could sometimes be used, for example in
Johannes Bureus Johannes Thomae Bureus Agrivillensis (born Johan Bure; 1568–1652) was a Swedish polymath, antiquarian, mystic, royal librarian, poet, and tutor and adviser of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. He is a well-known exponent of Gothicism. Life ...
's, ''Runa: ABC-Boken'' (1611). The ligature ů in particular saw use in Early Modern High German, but it merged in later Germanic languages with (e.g. MHG , ENHG ,
Modern German New High German (NHG; ) is the term used for the most recent period in the history of the German language, starting in the 17th century. It is a loan translation of the German (). The most important characteristic of the period is the developme ...
"foot"). It survives in
Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...
, where it is called .


Hwair

The letter
hwair Hwair (also , , ) is the name of , the Gothic alphabet, Gothic letter expressing the or sound (reflected in English language, English by the inverted ''Wh (digraph), wh''-spelling for ). Hwair is also the name of the Latin ligature (capital ) ...
, used only in
transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , Armenian → or L ...
of the
Gothic language Gothic is an extinct language, extinct East Germanic languages, East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the ''Codex Argenteus'', a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only Ea ...
, resembles a ligature. It was introduced by
philologists Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...
around 1900 to replace the
digraph Digraph, often misspelled as diagraph, may refer to: * Digraph (orthography), a pair of characters used together to represent a single sound, such as "nq" in Hmong RPA * Ligature (writing), the joining of two letters as a single glyph, such as " ...
formerly used to express the phoneme in question, e.g. by
Migne Jacques Paul Migne (; 25 October 1800 – 24 October 1875) was a French priest who published inexpensive and widely distributed editions of theological works, encyclopedias, and the texts of the Church Fathers, with the goal of providing a ...
in the 1860s ( vol. 18).


Byzantine Ȣ

The
Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...
s had a unique o-u ligature that, while originally based on the
Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...
's ο-υ, carried over into Latin alphabets as well. This ligature is still seen today on icon artwork in Greek Orthodox churches, and sometimes in graffiti or other forms of informal or decorative writing.


Gha (OI)

Gha ( :File:Latin small letter Reversed thorn.svg), a rarely used letter based on Q and G, was misconstrued by the
ISO The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Me ...
to be an OI ligature because of its appearance, and is thus known (to the ISO and, in turn,
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
) as "Oi". Historically, it was used in many Latin-based orthographies of Turkic (e.g., Azerbaijani) and other
central Asian Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...
languages.


International Phonetic Alphabet

The
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
formerly used ligatures to represent
affricate consonant An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...
s, of which six are encoded in Unicode: and . One
fricative consonant A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...
is still represented with a ligature: , and the
extensions to the IPA The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA , are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the Internati ...
contain three more: , and .


Initial Teaching Alphabet

The
Initial Teaching Alphabet The Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA or i.t.a.) is a variant of the Latin alphabet developed by Sir James Pitman (the grandson of Sir Isaac Pitman, inventor of a system of shorthand) in the early 1960s. It was not intended to be a strictly phonetic ...
, a short-lived alphabet intended for young children, used a number of ligatures to represent long vowels: , , , , , and ligatures for , and that are not encoded in Unicode. Ligatures for consonants also existed, including ligatures of , , , , and a reversed with (neither the reversed t nor any of the consonant ligatures are in Unicode).


Rare ligatures

Rarer ligatures also exist, including ; ; ; ; (barred ); ; , which is used in medieval Nordic languages for (a long
close-mid back rounded vowel The close-mid back rounded vowel, or high-mid back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . Close-mid back protruded vowel The clo ...
), as well as in some orthographies of the
Massachusett language The Massachusett language is an Algonquian languages, Algonquian language of the Algic languages, Algic language family that was formerly spoken by several peoples of eastern coastal and southeastern Massachusetts. In its revived form, it is s ...
to represent (a long
close back rounded vowel The close back rounded vowel, or high back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is u. I ...
); ; , which was used in
Medieval Welsh Middle Welsh (, ) is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 15th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed directly from Old Welsh (). Literature and history Middle Welsh is ...
to represent (the
voiceless lateral fricative The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is , a ...
); ; ; ; and have
Unicode codepoint Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 cha ...
s (in code block
Latin Extended-E Latin Extended-E is a Unicode block containing Latin script characters used in German dialectology (Teuthonista), Anthropos (journal), Anthropos alphabet, Yakut scripts, Sakha and Americanist phonetic notation, Americanist usage. Block Histo ...
for characters used in German dialectology (
Teuthonista Teuthonista is a phonetic transcription system used predominantly for the transcription of High German languages, (High) German dialects. It is very similar to other Central European transcription systems from the early 20th century. The base cha ...
), the Anthropos alphabet, Sakha and Americanist usage).


Symbols originating as ligatures

The most common ligature in modern usage is the
ampersand The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the grammatical conjunction, conjunction "and". It originated as a typographic ligature, ligature of the letters of the word (Latin for "and"). Etymology Tradi ...
. This was originally a ligature of and , forming the , meaning ''and''. It has exactly the same use in French and in English. The ampersand comes in many different forms. Because of its ubiquity, it is generally no longer considered a ligature, but a
logogram In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chine ...
. Like many other ligatures, it has at times been considered a letter (e.g., in early Modern English); in English it is pronounced ''and'', not ''et'', except in the case of , pronounced . In most typefaces, it does not immediately resemble the two letters used to form it, although certain typefaces use designs in the form of a ligature (examples include the original versions of Futura and
Univers Univers () is a sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a Grotesque (typeface classification), neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteenth-cen ...
,
Trebuchet MS Trebuchet MS is a Sans-serif#Humanist, humanist sans-serif typeface that Vincent Connare designed for Microsoft, Microsoft Corporation in 1996. Trebuchet MS was the font used for the window titles in the Luna (theme), Windows XP default theme, su ...
, and
Civilité Civilité type () is a typeface introduced in 1557 by the French Punchcutting, punchcutter Robert Granjon. These characters imitate Blackletter#French cursiva, French cursiva letters of the Renaissance, specifically a formal style of secretary ha ...
, known in modern times as the italic of
Garamond Garamond is a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his lifetime. Garamond-style typefaces are popular to this day and often used for book printing and bod ...
). Similarly, the
number sign The symbol is known as the number sign, hash, (or in North America) the pound sign. The symbol has historically been used for a wide range of purposes including the designation of an ordinal number and as a Typographic ligature, ligatured abbre ...
originated as a stylized abbreviation of the Roman term , written as . Over time, the number sign was simplified to how it is seen today, with two horizontal strokes across two slash-like strokes. Now a logogram, the symbol is used mainly to denote (in the US) numbers, and weight in pounds. It has also been used popularly on
push-button telephone A push-button telephone is a telephone that has buttons or keys for dialing a telephone number, in contrast to a rotary dial used in earlier telephones. Western Electric experimented as early as 1941 with methods of using mechanically activated ...
s and as the
hashtag A hashtag is a metadata tag operator that is prefaced by the hash symbol, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services–especially Twitter and Tumblr–as a form of user-generated tagging that enable ...
indicator. The
at sign The at sign () is an accounting and invoice abbreviation meaning "at a rate of" (e.g. 7 Widget (economics), widgets @ £2 per widget = £14), now seen more widely in email addresses and social media platform User (computing), handles. It is norm ...
is possibly a ligature, but there are many different theories about the origin. One theory says that the French word (meaning ''at''), was simplified by scribes who, instead of lifting the pen to write the grave accent, drew an arc around the . Another states that it is short for the Latin word for ''toward'', , with the being represented by the arc. Another says it is short for an abbreviation of the term ''each at'', with the encasing the . Around the 18th century, it started being used in commerce to indicate price per unit, as "15 units @ $1". After the popularization of
Email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...
, this fairly unpopular character became widely known, used to tag specific users. Lately, it has been used to de-gender nouns in Spanish with no agreed pronunciation. The
dollar sign The dollar sign, also known as the peso sign, is a currency symbol consisting of a Letter case, capital crossed with one or two vertical strokes ( or depending on typeface), used to indicate the unit of various currency, currencies around ...
possibly originated as a ligature (for "pesos", although there are other theories as well) but is now a logogram. At least once, the
United States dollar The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...
used a symbol resembling an overlapping U-S ligature, with the right vertical bar of the U intersecting through the middle of the S ( US ) to resemble the modern dollar sign. The
Spanish peseta The peseta (, ) was the currency of Spain between 1868 and 2002. Along with the French franc, it was also a de facto currency, ''de facto'' currency used in Andorra (which had no national currency with legal tender). Etymology The name of the ...
was sometimes abbreviated by a ligature (from ''Pts''). The ligature (F-with-bar) was proposed in 1968 by
Édouard Balladur Édouard Balladur (; born 2 May 1929) is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France under François Mitterrand from 29 March 1993 to 17 May 1995. He unsuccessfully ran for president in the 1995 French presidential election, co ...
,
Minister of Economy A ministry of finance is a ministry or other government agency in charge of government finance, fiscal policy, and financial regulation. It is headed by a finance minister, an executive or cabinet position . A ministry of finance's portfolio ...
. as a symbol for
French franc The franc (; , ; currency sign, sign: F or Fr), also commonly distinguished as the (FF), was a currency of France. Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amoun ...
but was never adopted and has never been officially used. In
astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...
, the
planetary symbol Planetary symbols are used in astrological symbol, astrology and traditionally in astronomical symbol, astronomy to represent a classical planet (which includes the Sun and the Moon) or one of the modern planets. The classical symbols were also use ...
for Mercury () may be a ligature of Mercury's
caduceus The caduceus (☤; ; , ) is the staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology and consequently by Hermes Trismegistus in Greco-Egyptian mythology. The same staff was borne by other heralds like Iris (mythology), Iris, the messenger of Hera. The s ...
and a cross (which was added in the 16th century to Christianize the pagan symbol), though other sources disagree; the symbol for Venus may be a ligature of the Greek letters (phi) and (kappa). The symbol for Jupiter () descends from a Greek
zeta Zeta (, ; uppercase Ζ, lowercase ζ; , , classical or ''zē̂ta''; ''zíta'') is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 7. It was derived from the Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician letter zay ...
with a horizontal stroke, , as an abbreviation for ''Zeus''. Saturn's
astronomical symbol Astronomical symbols are abstract pictorial symbols used to represent astronomical objects, theoretical constructs and observational events in Western culture, European astronomy. The earliest forms of these symbols appear in Greek papyrus tex ...
() has been traced back to the Greek
Oxyrhynchus Papyri The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by papyrology, papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient Landfill, rubbish dump near Oxyrhync ...
, where it can be seen to be a Greek
kappa Kappa (; uppercase Κ, lowercase κ or cursive ; , ''káppa'') is the tenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiceless velar plosive sound in Ancient and Modern Greek. In the system of Greek numerals, has a value of 20. It was d ...
-
rho Rho (; uppercase Ρ, lowercase ρ or ; or ) is the seventeenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 100. It is derived from Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician letter resh . Its uppercase form uses the same ...
with a horizontal stroke, as an abbreviation for (
Cronus In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Cronus, Cronos, or Kronos ( or ; ) was the leader and youngest of the Titans, the children of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (mythology), Uranus (Sky). He overthrew his father and ruled dur ...
), the Greek name for the planet. It later came to look like a lower-case Greek
eta Eta ( ; uppercase , lowercase ; ''ē̂ta'' or ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel, . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative, , in most dialects of Ancient Greek, it ...
, with the cross added at the top in the 16th century to Christianize it. The dwarf planet
Pluto Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of Trans-Neptunian object, bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Su ...
is symbolized by a PL ligature, . A different PL ligature, , represents the
property line A unit of real estate or immovable property is limited by a legal boundary (sometimes also referred to as a property line, lot line or bounds). The boundary (in Latin: ''limes'') may appear as a discontinuation in the terrain: a ditch, a bank, a ...
in surveying. In engineering diagrams, a CL ligature, , represents the center line of an object. The
interrobang The interrobang (), also known as the interabang (sometimes rendered as ?!, !?, ?!?, ?!!, !??, or !?!), is an unconventional punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the question mark (also known as the interrogative point) and ...
is an unconventional punctuation meant to combine the interrogation point (or the
question mark The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation, punctuation mark that indicates a question or interrogative clause or phrase in many languages. History The history of the question mark is ...
) and the bang (printer's slang for
exclamation mark The exclamation mark (also known as exclamation point in American English) is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or to show wikt:emphasis, emphasis. The exclamation mark often marks ...
) into one symbol, used to denote a sentence which is both a question and is exclaimed. For example, the sentence "Is that actually true‽" shows that the speaker is surprised while asking their question.
Alchemy Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first ...
used a set of mostly standardized symbols, many of which were ligatures: 🜇 (AR, for
aqua regia Aqua regia (; from Latin, "regal water" or "royal water") is a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, optimally in a molar concentration, molar ratio of 1:3. Aqua regia is a fuming liquid. Freshly prepared aqua regia is colorless, but i ...
); 🜈 (S inside a V, for
aqua vitae ''Aqua vitae'' (Latin for "water of life") or aqua vita is an archaic name for a strong aqueous solution of ethanol. These terms could also be applied to weak ethanol without rectification. Usage was widespread during the Middle Ages and the ...
); 🝫 (MB, for ary's bath a double boiler); 🝬 (VB, for , a steam bath); and 🝛 (''aaa'' with
overline An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal and vertical, horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In old mathematical notation, an overline was called a ''vinculum (symbol), vinculum'', a notation fo ...
, for
amalgam Amalgam most commonly refers to: * Amalgam (chemistry), mercury alloy * Amalgam (dentistry), material of silver tooth fillings ** Bonded amalgam, used in dentistry Amalgam may also refer to: * Amalgam Comics, a publisher * Amalgam Digital, an in ...
). Composer
Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian and American composer, music theorist, teacher and writer. He was among the first Modernism (music), modernists who transformed the practice of harmony in 20th-centu ...
introduced two ligatures as musical symbols to denote melody and countermelody. The symbols are ligatures of HT and NT, 𝆦 and 𝆧, from the German for
hauptstimme In music, (German for ''primary voice'') or is the main melody, voice, chief part (music), part; i.e., the counterpoint, contrapuntal or melodic line of primary importance, in opposition to . (German for ''secondary voice'') or is the seco ...
and nebenstimme respectively.


Digraphs

Digraphs, such as in
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...
or Welsh, are not ligatures in the general case as the two letters are displayed as separate glyphs: although written together, when they are joined in handwriting or italic fonts the base form of the letters is not changed and the individual glyphs remain separate. Like some ligatures discussed above, these digraphs may or may not be considered individual letters in their respective languages. Until the 1994 spelling reform, the digraphs and were considered separate letters in Spanish for
collation Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fi ...
purposes. Catalan makes a difference between "Spanish ll" or palatalized l, written as in (law), and "French ll" or geminated l, written as in (colleague). The difference can be illustrated with the French digraph , which is composed of the ligature and the simplex letter .


Dutch IJ

In
Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...
, can be considered a digraph, a ligature, or a letter in itself, depending on the standard used. Its uppercase and
lowercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing system ...
forms are often available as a single glyph with a distinctive ligature in several professional typefaces (e.g.
Zapfino Zapfino is a calligraphic typeface designed for Linotype by typeface designer Hermann Zapf in 1998. It is based on an alphabet Zapf originally penned in 1944. As a font, it makes extensive use of ligatures and character variations (for example ...
).
Sans serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...
uppercase glyphs, popular in the
Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
, typically use a ligature resembling a with a broken left-hand stroke. Adding to the confusion, Dutch handwriting can render (which is not found in native Dutch words, but occurs in words borrowed from other languages) as a -glyph without the dots in its lowercase form and the in its uppercase form looking virtually identical (only slightly bigger). When written as two separate letters, both should be capitalized or both not to form a correctly spelled word, like or (
ice Ice is water that is frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 ° C, 32 ° F, or 273.15 K. It occurs naturally on Earth, on other planets, in Oort cloud objects, and as interstellar ice. As a naturally oc ...
).


Non-Latin alphabets

Ligatures are not limited to Latin script: *The
Armenian alphabet The Armenian alphabet (, or , ) or, more broadly, the Armenian script, is an alphabetic writing system developed for Armenian and occasionally used to write other languages. It is one of the three historical alphabets of the South Caucasu ...
has the following ligatures: և (ե+ւ), ﬔ (մ+ե), ﬕ (մ+ի), ﬓ (մ+ն), ﬗ (մ+խ), ﬖ (վ+ն) *Most
Brahmic The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...
abugida An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit ...
s make frequent use of ligatures in consonant clusters. The number of ligatures employed is language-dependent; thus many more ligatures are conventionally used in
Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...
when writing
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
than when writing
Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
. Having 37 consonants in total, the total number of ligatures that can be formed in Devanagari using only two letters is 1369, though few fonts are able to render all of them. In particular, Mangal, which is included with
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
' Indic support, does not correctly handle ligatures with consonants attached to the right of the characters द, ट, ठ, ड, and ढ, leaving the
virama Virama ( ्, ) is a Sanskrit phonological concept to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter, commonly used as a generic term for a codepoint in Unicode, representing either # halanta, hasanta or explicit vir ...
attached to them and displaying the following consonant in its standard form. *The
Georgian script The Georgian scripts are the three writing systems used to write the Georgian language: Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli. Although the systems differ in appearance, their letters share the same names and alphabetical order and are writte ...
includes
Uni (asomtavruli , later , nuskhuri , later , mkhedruli უ, mtavruli Უ) is the 23rd letter of the three Georgian scripts.Machavariani, p. 136 In the system of Georgian numerals it has a value of 400 as letter Vie.Mchedlidze, (2) p. 78 Uni com ...
(uni), which is a combination of
Oni (asomtavruli , nuskhuri , mkhedruli ო, mtavruli Ო) is the 16th letter of the three Georgian scripts.Machavariani, p. 136 The letter Oni can also be spelled like the Latin letter L, however this version of writing Oni has fallen out of favour ...
(oni) and the former letter
Vie (asomtavruli , nuskhuri , mkhedruli ჳ, mtavruli Ჳ) is the 22nd letter of the three Georgian scripts.Machavariani, p. 136 In the system of Georgian numerals it has a value of 400. Now obsolete in Georgian language Georgian (, ) is the ...
(vie). *A number of ligatures have been employed in the
Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...
, in particular a combination of omicron (Ο) and upsilon (Υ), which later gave rise to a letter of the
Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...
—see
Ou (letter) Ou (Majuscule: , Minuscule: ) is a ligature of the Greek letters ο and υ which was frequently used in Byzantine manuscripts. This omicron-upsilon ligature is still seen today on icon artwork in Greek Orthodox churches, and sometimes in gr ...
. Among the ancient Greek
acrophonic numerals The Attic numerals are a symbolic number notation used by the ancient Greeks. They were also known as Herodianic numerals because they were first described in a 2nd-century manuscript by Herodian; or as acrophonic numerals (from acrophony) ...
, ligatures were common (in fact, the ligature of a short-legged capital pi was a key feature of the acrophonic numeral system). *Cyrillic ligatures: Љ, Њ, Ы, Ѿ.
Iotated In Slavic languages, iotation (, ) is a form of palatalization that occurs when a consonant comes into contact with the palatal approximant from the succeeding phoneme. The is represented by iota (ι) in the early Cyrillic alphabet and the Gre ...
Cyrillic letters are ligatures of the early Cyrillic decimal I and another vowel:
Iotated A () is a letter of the Cyrillic script, built as a ligature of the letters І and А, and used today only in Church Slavonic. It is unusual among early Cyrillic letters in having no direct counterpart in Glagolitic: Ⱑ ( jat’) is us ...
, Ѥ, Ѩ, Ѭ, Ю (sometimes also spelled ЮУ). In
Serbian Cyrillic alphabet The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (, ), also known as the Serbian script, (, ), is a standardized variation of the Cyrillic script used to write the Serbian language. It originated in medieval Serbia and was significantly reformed in the 19th cen ...
, the letters lje and
nje Nje, Nye, or Ñe (Њ њ; italics: ''Њ њ'') is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is a Typographic ligature, ligature of the Cyrillic letters En (Cyrillic), En and Soft Sign .Maretić, Tomislav. ''Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ...
(љ, њ), were developed as ligatures of Cyrillic used in
Serbian Language Serbian (, ) is the standard language, standardized Variety (linguistics)#Standard varieties, variety of the Serbo-Croatian language mainly used by Serbs. It is the official and national language of Serbia, one of the three official languages of ...
, being El and En (л, н) with the
soft sign The soft sign (Ь ь; italics: ) is a letter in the Cyrillic script that is used in various Slavic languages. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short or reduced front vowel. However, over time, the specific vowel sound it denote ...
(ь). They were invented by
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić VUK or Vuk may refer to: *Vuk (name), South Slavic given name ** Vuk, Ban of Bosnia (), a member of the Kotromanić dynasty ** Vuk Karadžić (1787–1864), Serbian language reformer and folklorist, often referred to simply as Vuk * ''Vuk'' (film) ...
for use in his 1818 dictionary, replacing the earlier digraphs ⟨ль⟩ and ⟨нь⟩.Maretić, Tomislav. ''Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga književnog jezika''. 1899. The Yae, a ligature of ya (Я) and e also exists: Ԙԙ, as do Dzze (Ꚉꚉ ← Д + З) and Zhwe (Ꚅꚅ ← З + Ж). *Some forms of the
Glagolitic The Glagolitic script ( , , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saints Cyril and Methodi ...
script, used from Middle Ages to the 19th century to write some Slavic languages, have a box-like shape that lends itself to more frequent use of ligatures. *In the
Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably ...
, the letters
aleph Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician ''ʾālep'' 𐤀, Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew ''ʾālef'' , Aramaic alphabet, Aramaic ''ʾālap'' ...
() and
lamed Lamedh or lamed is the twelfth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Hebrew ''lāmeḏ'' , Aramaic ''lāmaḏ'' 𐡋, Syriac ''lāmaḏ'' ܠ, Arabic ''lām'' , and Phoenician ''lāmd'' 𐤋. Its sound value is . It is also related to the Anc ...
() can form a ligature, . The ligature appears in some pre-modern texts (mainly religious), or in
Judeo-Arabic Judeo-Arabic (; ; ) sometimes referred as Sharh, are a group of different ethnolects within the branches of the Arabic language used by jewish communities. Although Jewish use of Arabic, which predates Islam, has been in some ways distinct ...
texts, where that combination is very frequent, since '' -'' (written
aleph Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician ''ʾālep'' 𐤀, Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew ''ʾālef'' , Aramaic alphabet, Aramaic ''ʾālap'' ...
plus
lamed Lamedh or lamed is the twelfth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Hebrew ''lāmeḏ'' , Aramaic ''lāmaḏ'' 𐡋, Syriac ''lāmaḏ'' ܠ, Arabic ''lām'' , and Phoenician ''lāmd'' 𐤋. Its sound value is . It is also related to the Anc ...
, in the Hebrew script) is the definite article in Arabic. For example, the word ''
Allah Allah ( ; , ) is an Arabic term for God, specifically the God in Abrahamic religions, God of Abraham. Outside of the Middle East, it is principally associated with God in Islam, Islam (in which it is also considered the proper name), althoug ...
'' () can be written with this ligature: . *In the
Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet, or the Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is a unicase, unicameral script written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters, of which most ...
, historically a
cursive Cursive (also known as joined-up writing) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionality and m ...
derived from the
Nabataean alphabet The Nabataean script is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) that was used to write Nabataean Aramaic and Nabataean Arabic from the second century BC onwards.Documents épigraphiques recueillis dans le Nord de l'Arabie Paris, Impr. nat. 1884 * Phili ...
, most letters' shapes depend on whether they are followed (word-initial), preceded (word-final) or both (medial) by other letters. For example, Arabic
mīm Mem (also spelled Meem, Meme, or Mim) is the thirteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Hebrew ''mēm'' , Aramaic ''mem'' 𐡌, Syriac ''mīm'' ܡ, Arabic ''mīm'' , and Phoenician ''mēm'' 𐤌. Its sound value is . It is also relate ...
, isolated , tripled (''mmm'', rendering as initial, medial and final): . Notable are the shapes taken by
lām + ʼalif Lamedh or lamed is the twelfth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Hebrew ''lāmeḏ'' , Aramaic ''lāmaḏ'' 𐡋, Syriac ''lāmaḏ'' ܠ, Arabic ''lām'' , and Phoenician ''lāmd'' 𐤋. Its sound value is . It is also related to the Anci ...
isolated: , and lām + ʼalif medial or final: . Besides the obligatory lām + ʼalif ligature, Arabic script grammar requires numerous stylistic ligatures. * Syriac, a semitic alphabet derived from the
Aramaic alphabet The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian peoples throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects und ...
, has three different scripts that all use ligatures. Like
Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
, some letters change their form depending on their position in relation to other letters, and this can also change how ligatures look. A popular ligature all three scripts use is Lamadh / +
Alap The Alap (; ) is the opening section of a typical North Indian classical performance. It is a form of melodic improvisation that introduces and develops a raga. In dhrupad singing the alap is unmetered, improvised (within the raga) and unaccomp ...
/ isolated and final: (Serto) , (Madnhaya) . Another popular one is Taw / +
Alap The Alap (; ) is the opening section of a typical North Indian classical performance. It is a form of melodic improvisation that introduces and develops a raga. In dhrupad singing the alap is unmetered, improvised (within the raga) and unaccomp ...
/, resulting in ( Serto) , ( Madhnhaya) . All three scripts use ligatures, but not in an equal spread or always with the same letters. Serto, being a flexible script, especially has many ligatures. For a wider, but not complete, list of Syriac ligatures, see '' Contextual forms of letters''. *
Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...
(one of the main languages of South Asia), which uses a calligraphic version of the Arabic-based
Nastaʿlīq script ''Nastaliq'' (; ; ), also romanized as ''Nastaʿlīq'' or ''Nastaleeq'' (), is one of the main calligraphic hands used to write Arabic script and is used for some Indo-Iranian languages, predominantly Classical Persian, Kashmiri, Punjabi a ...
, requires a great number of ligatures in digital typography.
InPage InPage is a word processor and page layout software by Concept Software Pvt. Ltd., an Indian information technology company. It is used for languages such as Urdu, Arabic, Balti, Balochi, Burushaski, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Sindhi and Sh ...
, a widely used
desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using dedicated software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online co ...
tool for Urdu, uses
Nastaliq ''Nastaliq'' (; ; ), also Romanization of Persian, romanized as ''Nastaʿlīq'' or ''Nastaleeq'' (), is one of the main book hand, calligraphic hands used to write Arabic script and is used for some Indo-Iranian languages, predominantly Persi ...
fonts with over 20,000 ligatures. *In
American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that i ...
a ligature of the
American manual alphabet The American Manual Alphabet (AMA) is a manual alphabet that augments the vocabulary of American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United S ...
is used to sign "I love you", from the English
initialism An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial letter of each word in all caps wi ...
ILY. It consists of the little finger of the letter I plus the thumb and forefinger of the letter L. The letter Y (little finger and thumb) overlaps with the other two letters. *The
Japanese language is the principal language of the Japonic languages, Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese dia ...
has a number of obsolete kana ligatures. Of these, only two are widely available ones on computers: one for
hiragana is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", ...
, , which is a vertical writing ligature of the characters
よ, in hiragana or ヨ in katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as ...
and ; and one for
katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
, , which is a vertical writing ligature of the characters and . * Lao uses three ligatures, all comprising the letter ຫ (h). As a tonal language, most consonant sounds in Lao are represented by two consonants, which will govern the tone of the syllable. Five consonant sounds are only represented by a single consonant letter (ງ (ŋ), ນ (m), ມ (n), ລ (l), ວ (w)), meaning that one cannot render all the tones for words beginning with these sounds. A silent ຫ indicates that the syllable should be read with the tone rules for ຫ, rather than those of the following consonant. Three consonants can form ligatures with the letter ຫ. ຫ+ນ=ໜ (n), ຫ+ມ=ໝ (m) and ຫ+ລ=ຫຼ (l). ງ (ŋ) and ວ (w) just form clusters: ຫງ (ŋ) and ຫວ (w). ລ (l) can also be used written in a cluster rather than as a ligature: ຫລ (l). *In many
runic Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see '' futhark'' vs ''runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were primarily used to represent a sound value (a ...
texts ligatures are common. Such ligatures are known as bind-runes and were optional.


Chinese ligatures

Written Chinese Written Chinese is a writing system that uses Chinese characters and other symbols to represent the Chinese languages. Chinese characters do not directly represent pronunciation, unlike letters in an alphabet or syllabograms in a syllabary. Rath ...
has a long history of creating new characters by merging parts or wholes of other
Chinese character Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only on ...
s. However, a few of these combinations do not represent
morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
s but retain the original multi-character (multiple morpheme) reading and are therefore not considered true characters themselves. In Chinese, these ligatures are called () or (); see polysyllabic Chinese characters for more. One popular ligature used on decorations used for
Chinese Lunar New Year Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival (see also #Names, § Names), is a festival that celebrates the beginning of a New Year, new year on the traditional lunisolar calendar, lunisolar Chinese calendar. It is one of the most important holi ...
is a combination of the four characters for (), meaning "ushering in wealth and fortune" and used as a popular New Year's greeting. In 1924, (; 1898–1967) created the ligature from two of the three characters (), meaning "library". Although it does have an assigned pronunciation of and appears in many dictionaries, it is not a
morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
and cannot be used as such in Chinese. Instead, it is usually considered a graphic representation of . In recent years, a Chinese
internet meme An Internet meme, or meme (, Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''MEEM''), is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the Internet, primarily through Social media, social media platforms. Internet memes manif ...
, the
Grass Mud Horse The Grass Mud Horse is a Chinese Internet meme and '' kuso'' parody based on a word play of the Mandarin profanity '' cào nǐ mā'' (), which means " fuck your mother". Homophonic puns are commonly used in Chinese language as silly humor to a ...
, has had such a ligature associated with it combining the three relevant Chinese characters , , and (). Similar to the ligatures were several "two-syllable Chinese characters" () created in the 19th century as
Chinese characters Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...
for
SI units The International System of Units, internationally known by the abbreviation SI (from French ), is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. It is the only system of measurement with official st ...
. In Chinese these units are disyllabic and standardly written with two characters, as "centimeter" ( centi-, meter) or "kilowatt". However, in the 19th century these were often written via compound characters, pronounced disyllabically, such as for or for – some of these characters were also used in Japan, where they were pronounced with borrowed European readings instead. These have now fallen out of general use, but are occasionally seen.Victor Mair
"Polysyllabic characters in Chinese writing"
''Language Log'', 2011 August 2


Japanese ligatures

The
CJK Compatibility CJK Compatibility is a Unicode block containing square symbols (both CJK and Latin alphanumeric) encoded for compatibility with East Asian character sets. In Unicode 1.0, it was divided into two blocks, named CJK Squared Words (U+3300–U+337F) ...
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
block features characters that have been combined into one square character in legacy character set so that it matches Japanese text. For example, the Japanese equivalent of "stock company", () can be represented in 1 Unicode character . Its romanized abbreviation can also be 1 character . There are other Latin abbreviations such as ''kg'' for "
kilogram The kilogram (also spelled kilogramme) is the base unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI), equal to one thousand grams. It has the unit symbol kg. The word "kilogram" is formed from the combination of the metric prefix kilo- (m ...
" that can be ligated into 1 square character .


Computer typesetting

The
OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. Derived from TrueType, it retains TrueType's basic structure but adds many intricate data structures for describing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corpora ...
font format includes features for associating multiple
glyph A glyph ( ) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A ...
s to a single character, used for ligature substitution. Typesetting software may or may not implement this feature, even if it is explicitly present in the font's metadata.
XeTeX XeTeX ( or ; see also Pronouncing and writing "TeX") is a TeX typesetting engine using Unicode and supporting modern font technologies such as OpenType, Graphite and Apple Advanced Typography (AAT). It was originally written by Jonathan Kew ...
is a TeX typesetting engine designed to make the most of such advanced features. This type of substitution used to be needed mainly for typesetting Arabic texts, but ligature lookups and substitutions are being put into all kinds of Western Latin OpenType fonts. In OpenType, there are standard liga, historical hlig, contextual clig, discretionary dlig and required rlig ligatures.


TeX

Opinion is divided over whether it is the job of writers or typesetters to decide where to use ligatures.
TeX Tex, TeX, TEX, may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname * Tex Earnhardt (1930–2020), U.S. businessman * Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer ...
is an example of a computer typesetting system that makes use of ligatures automatically. The
Computer Modern Computer Modern is the original family of typefaces used by the typesetting program TeX. It was created by Donald Knuth with his Metafont program, and was most recently updated in 1992. Computer Modern and its variants remain very widely used in ...
Roman typeface provided with TeX includes the five common ligatures , , , , and . When TeX finds these combinations in a text, it substitutes the appropriate ligature, unless overridden by the typesetter.


CSS

CSS3 provides control over these properties using font-feature-settings, though the CSS Fonts Module Level 4 draft standard indicates that authors should prefer several other properties. Those include font-variant-ligatures, common-ligatures, discretionary-ligatures, historical-ligatures, and contextual.


Ligatures in Unicode (Latin alphabets)

This table below shows discrete letter pairs on the left, the corresponding
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
ligature in the middle column, and the Unicode code point on the right. Provided you are using an
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
and browser that can handle Unicode, and have the correct Unicode
fonts In movable type, metal typesetting, a font is a particular #Characteristics, size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) inclu ...
installed, some or all of these will display correctly. See also the provided graphic.
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
maintains that ligaturing is a presentation issue rather than a character definition issue, and that, for example, "if a modern font is asked to display 'h' followed by 'r', and the font has an 'hr' ligature in it, it can display the ligature." Accordingly, the use of the special Unicode ligature characters is "discouraged", and "no more will be encoded in any circumstances". (Unicode has continued to add ligatures, but only in such cases that the ligatures were used as distinct letters in a language or could be interpreted as standalone
symbols A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise different concep ...
. For example, ligatures such as æ and œ are not used to replace arbitrary "ae" or "oe" sequences; it is generally considered incorrect to write "does" as "dœs".)
Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...
disables ligature substitution by default, largely for
backward compatibility In telecommunications and computing, backward compatibility (or backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, software, real-world product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with Input ...
when editing documents created in earlier versions of Word. Users can enable automatic ligature substitution on the Advanced tab of the Font dialog box.
LibreOffice Writer LibreOffice Writer is the free and open-source Word processor program, word processor and desktop publishing component of the LibreOffice suite and is a Fork (software development), fork of OpenOffice.org#Components, OpenOffice.org Writer. Writer ...
enables standard ligature substitution by default for OpenType fonts, user can enable or disable any ligature substitution on the Features dialog box, which is accessible via the Features button of the Character dialog box, or alternatively, input a syntax with font name and feature into the Font Name input box, for example: ''Noto Sans:liga=0''. There are separate
code point A code point, codepoint or code position is a particular position in a Table (database), table, where the position has been assigned a meaning. The table may be one dimensional (a column), two dimensional (like cells in a spreadsheet), three dime ...
s for the digraph DZ, the
Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...
digraph IJ, and for the Serbo-Croatian digraphs DŽ, LJ, and NJ. Although similar, these are digraphs, not ligatures. See Digraphs in Unicode.


Ligatures used only in

phonetic transcription Phonetic transcription (also known as Phonetic script or Phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phonetics'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the ...

Four "ligature ornaments" are included from U+1F670 to U+1F673 in the Ornamental Dingbats block: regular and bold variants of ℯT (script e and T) and of ɛT (open E and T).


Contemporary art

Typographic ligatures are used in a form of
contemporary art Contemporary art is a term used to describe the art of today, generally referring to art produced from the 1970s onwards. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a ...
, as can be illustrated by Chinese artist
Xu Bing Xu Bing (; born 1955) is a Chinese artist who served as vice-president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He is known for his printmaking skills and installation art, as well as his creative artistic use of language, words, and text and how ...
's work in which he combines Latin letters to form characters that resemble Chinese. Croatian designer Maja Škripelj also created a ligature that combined Glagolitic letters ⰘⰓ for
euro coins There are eight euro coin denominations, ranging from one cent to two euro (the euro is divided into a hundred cents). The coins first came into use in 2002. They have a common Obverse and reverse, reverse, portraying a map of Europe, but each cou ...
.


See also

* * (the unfused pairing of graphemes) * (optimization of spacing between adjacent letters). * * * * * * *


Notes


References


External links


Examples of CSS ligatures
{{Authority control Palaeography Typography