Typographic ligature

In autograph and typography, a band occurs area two or added graphemes are abutting as a individual glyph. Ligatures usually alter after characters administration accepted apparatus and are allotment of a added accepted chic of glyphs alleged "contextual forms", area the specific appearance of a letter depends on ambience such as surrounding belletrist or adjacency to the end of a line.

History

At the agent of typographical ligatures is the simple active calm of belletrist in manuscripts. Already the ancient accepted script, Sumerian cuneiform, includes abounding cases of appearance combinations that over the script's history gradually advance from a band into an absolute appearance in its own right. Ligatures amount noticeably in abounding actual scripts, conspicuously the Brahmic abugidas, or the bind rune of the Migration Period Germanic bewitched inscriptions.

Doubles (Geminated consonants) during the Roman Republican era were accounting as a sicilicus,1 during the mediaeval era several conventions existed, mostly characteristic marks, but in Nordic texts a accurate blazon of band appeared for ll and tt, referred to as torn l and torn t2

Medieval scribes, autograph in Latin, added autograph acceleration by accumulation characters and by addition of accounting abbreviation. For example, in blackletter, belletrist with right-facing bowls (b, o, and p) and those with left-facing bowls (c, e, o, d, g and q) were accounting with the adverse edges of the bowls superimposed. In abounding Software forms characters such as h, m, and n had their vertical acclamation superimposed. Scribes aswell acclimated accounting abbreviations to abstain accepting to address a accomplished appearance at a stroke. Manuscripts in the fourteenth aeon active hundreds of such abbreviations.

Simple archetype of broadly acclimated ligatures typed by autography typographic font.

In duke writing, a band is fabricated by abutting two or added characters in a way they wouldn't usually be, either by amalgamation their parts, autograph one aloft addition or one central another; while in printing, a band is a accumulation of characters that is typeset as a unit, and the characters don't accept to be abutting — for example, in some cases fi band prints belletrist f and i added afar than if they are typeset as abstracted letters.

When press with adaptable blazon was invented about 1450,3 typefaces included abounding ligatures and added letters, such as the letter Гѕ (thorn) which was aboriginal commissioned in English with y (e.g. ye olde shoppe), but after accounting as th. However, they began to abatement out of use with the appearance of the advanced use of sans serif machine-set physique argument in the 1950s and the development of bargain phototypesetting machines in the 1970s, which did not crave artisan ability or training to operate. Using ligatures fabricated press with adaptable blazon easier, because one block would alter common combinations of letters, that would contrarily crave two to three blocks. One of the aboriginal computer book programs to yield advantage of computer-driven book (and after laser printers) was the TeX affairs of Donald Knuth (see beneath for added on this). The trend was added adequate by the desktop publishing anarchy about 1985. Aboriginal computer software in accurate (except for TeX) had no way to acquiesce for band barter (the automated use of ligatures area appropriate), and in any case a lot of new agenda fonts did not cover any ligatures. As a lot of of the aboriginal PC development was advised for and in the English language, which already saw ligatures as alternative at best, a charge for ligatures was not seen. Band use fell as the amount of employed, traditionally-trained duke compositors and hot metal book apparatus operators dropped.

With the added abutment for added languages and alphabets in avant-garde computing, and the consistent bigger agenda book techniques such as OpenType, ligatures are boring advancing aback into use.

Latin alphabet

Stylistic ligatures

Many ligatures amalgamate f with an adjoining letter. The a lot of arresting archetype is fi (or fi, rendered with two accustomed letters). The tittle aloft the i in abounding typefaces collides with the awning of the f if placed beside anniversary added in a word, and are accumulated into a alone glyph with the tittle captivated into the f. Added ligatures with the letter f cover fj,note 1 fl (fl), ff (ff), ffi (ffi), and ffl (ffl). Ligatures for fa, fe, fo, fr, fs, ft, fb, fh, fu, fy, and for f followed by a abounding stop, comma, or hyphen, as able-bodied as the agnate set for the angled ff and fft are aswell used, admitting are beneath common.

These arose because with the accepted blazon array for lowercase f, the end of its awning is on a kern, which would be damaged by blow with aloft locations of the next letter.

Sometimes, a band bridge the morpheme abuttals of a blended chat (e.g., ff in shelfful4) is advised undesirable, and for archetype official German orthography as categorical in the Duden prohibits ligatures beyond agreement boundaries.5 Some computer programs (such as TeX) accommodate a agency of suppressing ligatures.

Ligatures "Th" and "Wh" illustration

Some fonts cover an fff band (the Requiem chantry by Jonathan Hoefler even contains an fffl ligature), advised for German admixture words like Sauerstoffflasche ("oxygen tank") and Schifffahrt ("boat trip").note 2 Since the arrangement fff in German alone anytime occurs beyond agreement boundaries (Schiff-fahrt, Sauerstoff-flasche) and ligatures are clearly banned beyond boundaries, these ligatures cannot be accurately active for German.5

Turkish has a dotted and dotless "I" next to "f" in words like fД±rД±n ("oven") and fikir ("idea"). The fi band would abstruse the acumen and is accordingly not acclimated in Turkish typography, and neither are added ligatures like that for fl, which accord to attenuate letter combinations anyway.

"Гџ" in the anatomy of a "ЕїК’" band on a artery assurance in Berlin ("Petersburger StraГџe"). The assurance on the appropriate ("Bersarinplatz") ends with a "tК’"-ligature.

Remnants of ſʒ ("sz") and tʒ ("tz") ligatures from Fraktur, a ancestors of German blackletter typefaces, originally binding in Fraktur but now active alone stylistically, can be apparent to this day on artery signs for city-limits squares whose name contains Platz or ends in -platz. Instead, the "sz" band has alloyed into a alone character, the German ß – see below.

Sometimes ligatures for st (st), ſt (ſt), ch, ct, Qu and Th are acclimated (e.g. in the book Linux Libertine).

editGerman Гџ

Main article: Гџ

The German Eszett band (also alleged the scharfes s (sharp s)) ß apparently acquired from the band "long s over annular s" (ſs) or, in Fraktur, "long s and z" (ſʒ). Even admitting "long s" ſ has contrarily abolished from German orthography, ß is still advised a ligature, and is replaced by 'SS' or 'SZ' (to bottle continued vowel-short beat conventions note: acclimated in Austria) in capitalized spelling and in alphabetic ordering. ß is alone acclimated in Germany and Austria, nowadays about never in Switzerland. Since the end of 2010, the Ständiger Ausschuss für geographische Namen (StAGN) suggests the new high case actualization for 'ß' rather than replacing it with 'SS' or 'SZ' for bounded names. The new actualization has not yet entered boilerplate writing.6

editLetters and diacritics basic as ligatures

Further information: List of Latin letters

Capilla de San Jose, Sevilla. Several ligatures.

The ligatures of Adobe Caslon Pro.

As the letter W is an accession to the Latin alphabet which originated in the seventh century, the phoneme it represents was aforetime accounting in assorted ways. In Old English the Runic letter Wynn (З·) was used, but Norman access afflicted Wynn out of use. By the 14th century, the "new" letter W, originated as two Vs or Us abutting together, developed into a accepted letter with its own position in the alphabet. Because of its about adolescence compared to added belletrist of the alphabet, alone a few European languages (English, Dutch, German, Polish, Welsh, Maltese, and Walloon) use the letter in built-in words.

The actualization Æ – lower case æ (in age-old times alleged æsc) if acclimated in the Danish, Norwegian, or Icelandic languages, or Old English, is not a typographic ligature. It is a audible letter—a vowel—and if alphabetised, is accustomed a altered abode in the alphabetic order. In avant-garde English orthography Æ is not advised an absolute letter but a spelling variant, for example: "encyclopædia" against "encyclopaedia" or "encyclopedia".

Г† comes from Medieval Latin, area it was an alternative band in some words, for example, "Г†neas". It is still begin as a alternative in English and French, but the trend has afresh been arise press the A and E separately.7 Similarly, Е’ and Е“, while commonly printed as ligatures in French, can be replaced by basic belletrist if abstruse restrictions crave it.

In German orthography, the umlauted vowels ä, ö, and ü historically arose from ae, oe, ue ligatures (strictly, from superscript e, viz. aͤ, oͤ, uͤ). It is accepted convenance to alter them with ae, oe, ue digraphs if the diacritics are unavailable, for archetype in cyberbanking conversation. While in alphabetic order, they are agnate not to ae, oe, ue, but to simple a, o, u except in buzz books area they are advised as agnate to ae, oe and ue (so that a name Müller will arise at the aforementioned abode as if it were spelled Mueller - German surnames accept a acerb anchored orthography, either a name is spelled with ü or with ue). The assemblage in Scandinavian languages is different: there the umlaut vowels are advised as absolute belletrist with positions at the end of the alphabet.

The ring characteristic acclimated in vowels such as å additionally originated as an o-ligature.8 Before the backup of the earlier 'aa' with 'å' became a de facto practice, an 'a' with addition 'a' on top (aͣ) could sometimes be used, for archetype in Johannes Bureus's, Runa: ABC-Boken (1611).9 The uo band ů in accurate saw use in Aboriginal Avant-garde High German, but it alloyed in after Germanic languages with u (e.g. MHG fuosz, ENHG fuͦß, Avant-garde German Fuß "foot"). It survives in Czech, area it is alleged kroužek.

The tilde characteristic as acclimated in Spanish and Portuguese, now apery the palatal nasal complete in the letter Г± and nasalization of the afflicted vowel, respectively, originated as an nn band (Espanna = EspaГ±a, anno = aГ±o).10 Similarly, the circumflex in French spelling stems from the band of a bashful s.11 The French, Portuguese, Catalan and old Spanish letter Г§ represents a "c" over a "z".

The letter hwair (Ж•), acclimated alone in adaptation of the Gothic language, resembles a hw ligature. It was alien by philologists about 1900 to alter the digraph hv aforetime acclimated to accurate the phoneme in question, e.g. by Migne in the 1860s (Patrologia Latina vol. 18).

The Byzantines had a altered o-u band (Иў) that, while originally based on the Greek alphabet's Ої-П…, agitated over into Latin-based alphabets as well. This band is still apparent today on figure artwork in Greek Orthodox churches, and sometimes in graffiti or added forms of breezy or adorning writing.

Gha (ЖЈ), a rarely acclimated letter based on Q and G, was misconstrued by the ISO to be an O-I band due to its appearance, and is appropriately accepted (to the ISO and, in turn, Unicode) as "Oi."

The International Phonetic Alphabet aforetime acclimated ligatures to represent affricate consonants, of which six are encoded in Unicode: КЈ, К¤, КҐ, К¦, К§ and КЁ. One affricate accordant is still represented with a ligature: Й®, and the Extensions to the IPA accommodate three more: К© , КЄ and К«.

Rarer ligatures aswell exist, such as Ꜳꜳ, Ꜵꜵ, Ꜷꜷ, Ꜹꜹ, Ꜻꜻ, Ꜽꜽ, Ꝏꝏ, ᵫ, ᵺ, Ỻỻ, Ꜩꜩ ᴂ and ᴔ.

editSymbols basic as ligatures

Et band in a humanist script.

The a lot of accepted band is the ampersand &. This was originally a band of E and t, basic the Latin chat "et", acceptation "and". It has absolutely the aforementioned use (except for pronunciation) in French and is acclimated in English. The ampersand comes in abounding altered forms. Because of its ubiquity, it is about no best advised a ligature, but a logogram.

Like abounding added ligatures, it has at times been advised a letter (e.g. in aboriginal Avant-garde English); In English it is arresting "and", not "et," except in the case of &c, arresting "et cetera." In a lot of fonts, it does not anon resemble the two belletrist acclimated to anatomy it, although assertive typefaces (such as Trebuchet MS) architecture & in the anatomy of a ligature.

Similarly, the dollar sign, $, possibly originated as a band (for "pesos", although there are added theories as well) but is now a logogram.12 The Spanish peseta was sometimes adumbrated by a band ₧ (from Pts).

editDigraphs

Uppercase IJ glyph actualization as the characteristic "broken-U" band in Helvetica rendered by Omega TeX

Comparison of Ді and y in assorted forms

Digraphs, such as ll in Spanish or Welsh, are not ligatures in the accepted case as the two belletrist are displayed as abstracted glyphs: although accounting together, if they are abutting in autography or italic fonts the abject anatomy of the belletrist is not afflicted and the alone glyphs abide separate. Like some ligatures discussed above, these digraphs may or may not be advised alone belletrist in their corresponding languages. Until the 1994 spelling reform, the digraphs ch and ll were advised abstracted belletrist in Spanish for accumulating purposes.

The aberration can be illustrated with the French digraph Е“u, which is composed of the band Е“ and the canker letter u.

Dutch ij, however, is somewhat added ambiguous. Depending on the accepted used, it can be advised a digraph, a band or a letter in itself, and its uppercase and lowercase forms are generally accessible as a alone glyph with a characteristic band in several able fonts (e.g. Zapfino). Sans serif uppercase IJ glyphs, accepted in the Netherlands, about use a band akin a U with a torn left-hand stroke. Adding to the confusion, Dutch autography can cede y (which is not begin in built-in Dutch words, but occurs in words adopted from added languages) as a ij-glyph after the dots in its lowercase anatomy and the IJ in its uppercase anatomy searching around identical (only hardly bigger). If written/typed as two abstracted letters, both should be capitalized —or not— to anatomy a accurately spelled word, like IJs or ijs (ice).

editLatin-derived alphabets that use appropriate ligatures

Danish and Norwegian

Faroese

French

German

Icelandic

Non-Latin alphabets

Ligatures are not bound to Latin script:

The Brahmic abugidas accomplish accepted use of ligatures in accordant clusters. The amount of ligatures active may be language-dependent; appropriately abounding added ligatures are commonly acclimated in Devanagari if autograph Sanskrit than if autograph Hindi. Having 37 consonants in total, the absolute amount of ligatures that can be formed in Devanagari application alone two belletrist is 1369, admitting few fonts are able to cede all of them. In particular, Mangal.ttf, which is included with Microsoft Windows' Indic support, does not accurately handle ligatures with consonants absorbed to the appropriate of the characters द, ट, ठ, ड, and ढ, abrogation the virama absorbed to them and announcement the afterward accordant in its accepted form.

A amount of ligatures accept been active in the Greek alphabet, in accurate a aggregate of omicron (Ο) and upsilon (Υ) which after gave acceleration to a letter of the Cyrillic Software — see Ou (letter).

Cyrillic ligatures: Р‰, РЉ, Р«, Сѕ. Iotified Cyrillic belletrist are ligatures of the aboriginal Cyrillic decimal I and addition vowel: к™– (ancestor of РЇ), С¤, СЁ, С¬, Р® (descended from addition ligature, РћСѓ, an aboriginal adaptation of РЈ). Two belletrist of the Macedonian and Serbian Cyrillic alphabets, lje and nje (С™, Сљ), were developed in the nineteenth aeon as ligatures of Cyrillic El and En (Р», РЅ) with the bendable assurance (СЊ). A band of ya (РЇ) and e aswell exists: Ф˜Ф™, as do some added ligatures: кљ„кљ… and кљ€кљ‰.

Some forms of the Glagolitic script, acclimated from Middle Ages to the 19th aeon to address some Slavic languages, accept a box-like appearance that lends itself to added accepted use of ligatures.

In the Hebrew alphabet, the belletrist aleph and lamed can anatomy a band (п­Џ). The band appears in some pre-modern texts (mainly religious), or in Judeo-Arabic texts, area that aggregate is actual frequent, back К” al- (written aleph additional lamed, in the Hebrew script) is the audible commodity in Arabic.

In the Arabic alphabet, historically a cursive acquired from the Nabataean alphabet, a lot of letters' shapes depend on whether they are followed (word-initial), preceded (word-final) or both (medial) by added letters. For example, Arabic mД«m, abandoned Щ…, tripled (mmm, apprehension as initial, centermost and final): Щ…Щ…Щ… . Notable are the shapes taken by lДЃm + Кјalif isolated: п»», and lДЃm + Кѕalif centermost or final: п»ј. Unicode has a appropriate Allah band at U+FDF2: п·І.

Urdu (one of the capital languages of South Asia), which uses a calligraphic adaptation of the Arabic-based Nasta`liq script, requires a abundant amount of ligatures in agenda typography. InPage, a broadly acclimated desktop publishing apparatus for Urdu, uses Nasta`liq fonts with over 20,000 ligatures.

In ASL, a band of the American chiral alphabet is acclimated to assurance 'I adulation you', from the English abridgement ILY. It consists of the little feel of the letter I additional the deride and forefinger of the letter L. The letter Y (little feel and thumb) overlaps with the added two letters.

The Japanese accent uses two ligatures, one for hiragana, г‚џ, which is a vertical autograph band of the characters г‚€ and г‚Љ, and one for katakana, гѓї, which is a vertical autograph band of the characters г‚і and гѓ€. Both ligatures accept collapsed out of use in avant-garde Japanese.

Lao uses three ligatures, all absolute the letter ຫ (h). As a tonal language, a lot of accordant sounds in Lao are represented by two consonants, which will administer the accent of the syllable. Five accordant sounds are alone represented by a individual accordant letter (ງ (ŋ), ນ (m), ມ (n), ລ (l), ວ (w)), acceptation that one cannot cede all the tones for words alpha with these sounds. A bashful ຫ indicates that the affricate should be apprehend with the accent rules for ຫ, rather than those of the afterward consonant. Three consonants can anatomy ligatures with the letter ຫ. ຫ+ນ=ໜ (n), ຫ+ມ=ໝ (m) and ຫ+ລ=ຫຼ (l). ງ (ŋ) and ວ (w) just anatomy clusters: ຫງ (ŋ) and ຫວ (w). ລ (l) can aswell be acclimated accounting in a array rather than as a ligature: ຫລ (l).

In abounding bewitched texts ligatures are common. Such ligatures are accepted as bind-runes and were optional.

editChinese ligatures

A Chinese chéngyǔ (expression) accounting as a ligature. It reads Kǒng Mèng hà oxué (孔孟好學) and agency "it is acceptable to abstraction Confucius and Mencius."

Written Chinese has a continued history of creating new characters by amalgamation locations or wholes of added Chinese characters. However, a few of these combinations do not represent morphemes but absorb the aboriginal multi-character (multiple morpheme) account and are accordingly not advised accurate characters themselves. In Chinese, these ligatures are alleged hГ©wГ©n (еђ€ж–‡) or hГ©shЕ« (еђ€ж›ё).

One accepted band acclimated on chūntiē decorations acclimated for Chinese Lunar New Year is a aggregate of the four characters for zhāocái jìnbǎo (招財進寶), acceptation "ushering in abundance and prosperity" and acclimated as a accepted New Year's greeting.

Chinese ligatures

A Chinese band for zhāocái jìnbǎo (招財進寶), a accepted New Year's greeting

The Cǎonímǎ (草泥马) band accumulation the three basic characters

In 1924, Du Dingyou (杜定友; 1898–1967) created the band "圕" from two of the three characters 圖書館 (túshūguǎn), acceptation "library".13 Although it does accept an assigned accentuation of tuān and appears in abounding dictionaries, it is not a morpheme and cannot be acclimated as such in Chinese. Instead, it is usually advised a clear representation of túshūguǎn.

In contempo years, a Chinese internet meme, the Grass Mud Horse, has had such a band associated with it accumulation the three accordant Chinese characters 草, 泥, and 马 (Cǎonímǎ).

Similar to the ligatures were several "two-syllable Chinese characters" (й›™йџізЇЂжјўе­—) created in the 19th aeon for cogent non-Chinese altitude units which accept back abundantly disappeared.

Computer typesetting

TeX is an archetype of a computer book arrangement that makes use of ligatures automatically. The Computer Avant-garde Roman book provided with TeX includes the 5 accepted ligatures ff, fi, fl, ffi, and ffl. When TeX finds these combinations in a argument it substitutes the adapted ligature, unless overridden by the typesetter. Opinion is disconnected over whether it is the job of writers or typesetters to adjudge area to use ligatures.

The OpenType chantry architecture includes appearance for advertence assorted glyphs to a individual character, acclimated for band substitution. Book software may or may not apparatus this feature, even if it is absolutely present in the font's metadata. XeTeX is a TeX book engine advised to accomplish the a lot of of such avant-garde features. This blazon of barter acclimated to be bare mainly for book Arabic texts, but band lookups and substitutions are getting put into all kinds of Western Latin OpenType fonts.

Typical ligatures in Latin script

This table beneath shows detached letter pairs on the left, the agnate Unicode band in the average column, and the Unicode cipher point on the right. Provided you are application an operating arrangement and browser that can handle Unicode, and accept the actual Unicode fonts installed, some or all of these will affectation correctly. See aswell the provided graphic.

Unicode maintains that ligaturing is a presentation affair rather than a appearance analogue issue, and that, for example, "if a avant-garde chantry is asked to affectation 'h' followed by 'r', and the chantry has an 'hr' band in it, it can affectation the ligature." Accordingly, the use of the appropriate Unicode band characters is "discouraged", and "no added will be encoded in any circumstances".14 Note about that ligatures such as æ and œ are never acclimated to alter approximate 'ae' or 'oe' sequences – 'does' can never be accounting 'dœs'.

editLigatures in Unicode (Latin-derived alphabets)

See also: Account of precomposed Latin characters in Unicode#Ligatures

This account is incomplete; several medieval ligatures in the U+A732 to U+A73D range, as able-bodied as a few others in that vicinity, are not yet listed.

Non-ligature Ligature Unicode HTML

Et & U+0026 &

Еїs, Еїz Гџ U+00DF ß

AE, ae Г†, Г¦ U+00C6, U+00E6 Æ æ

OE, oe Е’, Е“ U+0152, U+0153 Œ œ

IJ, ij ДІ, Ді U+0132, U+0133 IJ ij

ue ᵫ U+1D6B ᵫ

ff п¬Ђ U+FB00 ff

fi п¬Ѓ U+FB01 fi

fl fl U+FB02 fl

ffi п¬ѓ U+FB03 ffi

ffl ffl U+FB04 ffl

Еїt п¬… U+FB05 ſt

st st U+FB06 st

Also, there are abstracted cipher credibility for the digraph DZ and for the Croatian digraphs DЕЅ, LJ, and NJ. They are not ligatures but digraphs. See Digraphs in Unicode.

Ligatures acclimated alone in phonetic transcription:

Non-ligature Ligature Unicode HTML

db Иё U+0238 ȸ

qp (cp) И№ U+0239 ȹ

lК’ (or lezh) Й® U+026E ɮ

dz КЈ U+02A3 ʣ

dК’ (or dezh) К¤ U+02A4 ʤ

dК‘ (or dz curl) КҐ U+02A5 ʥ

ts К¦ U+02A6 ʦ

tКѓ (or tesh) К§ U+02A7 ʧ

tЙ• (or tc curl) КЁ U+02A8 ʨ

fЕ‹ К© U+02A9 ʩ

ls КЄ U+02AA ʪ

lz К« U+02AB ʫ

U+0238 and U+0239 are alleged digraphs, but are in fact ligatures.15