Chinese ligature
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes 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 g ...
. Examples are the characters æ and œ used in English and French, in which the letters 'a' and 'e' are joined for the first ligature and the letters 'o' and 'e' are joined for the second ligature. For stylistic and legibility reasons, 'f' and 'i' are often merged to create 'fi' (where the tittle on the 'i' merges with the hood of the 'f'); the same is true of 's' and 't' to create 'st'. The common
ampersand The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the conjunction "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters ''et''—Latin for "and". Etymology Traditionally in English, when spelling aloud, any letter that ...
(&) developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters 'E' and 't' (spelling , Latin for 'and') were combined.


History

The earliest known script Sumerian cuneiform 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 years of ...
hieratic Hieratic (; grc, ἱερατικά, hieratiká, priestly) 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 BC until the ris ...
both include many cases of character combinations that gradually evolve from ligatures into separately recognizable characters. Other notable ligatures, such as the Brahmic abugidas and the Germanic
bind rune A bind rune or bindrune ( is, bandrún) 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 (med ...
, figure prominently throughout ancient manuscripts. These new glyphs emerge alongside the proliferation of writing with a stylus, whether on paper or clay, and often for a practical reason: faster
handwriting Handwriting is the writing done with a writing instrument, such as a pen or pencil, in the hand. Handwriting includes both printing and cursive styles and is separate from formal calligraphy or typeface A typeface (or font family) is ...
. 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 type of script modifications. Medieval scribes who wrote in Latin increased their writing speed by combining characters and by introducing
notational abbreviation Scribal abbreviations or sigla (grammatical number, singular: siglum) are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek language, Greek, Old English and Old Norse. In modern manuscrip ...
s. Others conjoined letters for aesthetic purposes. For example, in
blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
, letters with right-facing bowls (b, o, and p) and those with left-facing bowls (c, e, o, d, g and q) were written with the facing edges of the bowls superimposed. In many script forms, characters such as h, m, and n 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 is the writing done with a writing instrument, such as a pen or pencil, in the hand. Handwriting includes both printing and cursive styles and is separate from formal calligraphy or typeface A typeface (or font family) is ...
, 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 fi ligature prints the letters f and i 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 block would replace frequent combinations of letters and also allowed more complex and interesting character designs which would otherwise collide with one another. Ligatures began to fall out of use because of their complexity 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 humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards. Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Underground. ...
and Futura. Inexpensive
phototypesetting Phototypesetting is a method of setting type. It uses photography to make columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper. It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing (digital typesetting). Th ...
machines in the 1970s (which did not require journeyman 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, various Latin accented letters, & et al. The trend against digraph use was further strengthened by the desktop publishing 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 mol ...
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's TeX 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, 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 by Jonathan Hoefler. Mrs Eaves by Zuzana Licko 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, and the incorporation of ligature support into the text display systems of macOS, Windows, and applications like Microsoft Office. 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 f with the following letter. A particularly prominent example is fi (or fi, rendered with two normal letters). The tittle of the i in many typefaces collides with the hood of the f when placed beside each other in a word, and are combined into a single glyph with the tittle absorbed into the f. Other ligatures with the letter f include fj, 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
full stop The full stop (Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point , is a punctuation mark. It is used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation ...
,
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline ...
, or hyphen are also used, as well as the equivalent set for the doubled ff. 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 arranging elements in lists ** Sort (Unix), a Unix utility which sorts the lines of a file ** Sort (C++), a function in the ...
for
lowercase Letter case is the distinction between the Letter (alphabet), letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain lang ...
f, the end of its hood is on a kern, which would be damaged by collision with raised parts of the next letter. Ligatures crossing the morpheme boundary of a composite word are sometimes considered incorrect, especially in official German orthography as outlined in the '' Duden''. An English example of this would be ff in ''shelfful''; a German example would be ("boat trip"). Some computer programs (such as TeX) provide a setting to disable ligatures for German, while some users have also written macros to identify which ligatures to disable.
Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...
distinguishes dotted and dotless "I". In a ligature with ''f'' (in words such as and ), this contrast would be obscured. The fi ligature is therefore not used in Turkish typography, and neither are other ligatures like that for fl, which would be rare anyway because of Turkish Phonotactics. Remnants of the ligatures ſʒ/ſz ("sharp s", ) and tʒ/tz ("sharp t", ) from Fraktur, a family of
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
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 st (st), ſt (ſt), ch, ck, ct, Qu and Th are used (e.g. in the typeface
Linux Libertine Linux Libertine is a digital typeface created by the Libertine Open Fonts Project, which aims to create free and open alternatives to proprietary typefaces such as Times New Roman. It is developed with the free font editor FontForge and is licen ...
). 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", " Chamberlain", and others. 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 (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
(also called the , meaning ''sharp s'') ß is an official letter of the alphabet in Germany and Austria. There is no general consensus about its history. 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). The latter is used as the design principle for the character in most of today's typefaces. 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 has been part of Unicode since 2008, and has appeared in more and more typefaces. The new character entered mainstream writing in June 2017. A new standardized German keyboard layout (DIN 2137-T2) has included the capital ß since 2012. 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.


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 communities participating in the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, 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. For example, compare the colonial-era spelling with the modern spelling .


Letter W

As the letter W is an addition to the Latin alphabet that originated in the seventh century, the phoneme it represents was formerly written in various ways. In
Old English Old English (, ), 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 was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
, the runic letter wynn (Ƿ) 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 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...
influence forced wynn out of use. By the 14th century, the "new" letter ''W'', originated as two Vs or Us 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 Æ (lower case æ; in ancient times named ) when used in the
Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
, Norwegian, or Icelandic languages, as well as in the related
Old English Old English (, ), 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 was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
language, is not a typographic ligature. It is a distinct letter—a vowel—and when alphabetised, is given a different place in the alphabetic order. In modern English orthography, Æ is not considered an independent letter but a spelling variant, for example: " encyclopædia" versus "encyclopaedia" or "encyclopedia". In this use, Æ comes from Medieval Latin, 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 A and E separately. This means that, although both Old English and Modern English have made use of the character, the purposes were different. Similarly, Œ and œ, while normally printed as ligatures in French, are replaced by component letters if technical restrictions require it.


Umlaut

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 common practice to replace them with ''ae, oe, ue'' 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 ''ü'' or with ''ue''); however, the alphabetic order used in other books treats them as equivalent to the simple letters ''a'', ''o'' and ''u''. The convention in Scandinavian languages and Finnish is different: there the umlaut vowels are treated as independent letters with positions at the end of the alphabet.


Ring

The ''
ring Ring 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 :(hence) to initiate a telephone connection Arts, entertainment and media Film and ...
''
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 ''diacriti ...
used in vowels such as å likewise originated as an o-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's, ''Runa: ABC-Boken'' (1611). The uo ligature ů in particular saw use in
Early Modern High German Early may refer to: History * The beginning or oldest part of a defined historical period, as opposed to middle or late periods, e.g.: ** Early Christianity ** Early modern Europe Places in the United States * Early, Iowa * Early, Texas * E ...
, but it merged in later Germanic languages with u (e.g. MHG , ENHG , Modern German "foot"). It survives in Czech, where it is called .


Tilde and circumflex

The '' tilde'' diacritic, used in Spanish as part of the letter '' ñ'', representing the
palatal nasal The voiced palatal nasal is a type of consonant used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase letter ''n'' with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom ...
consonant, and in Portuguese for nasalization of a vowel, originated in ligatures where ''n'' followed the base letter: → . Similarly, the
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
in
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
spelling stems from the ligature of a silent ''s''.


Hwair

The letter hwair (ƕ), used only in transliteration of the Gothic language, resembles a ''hw'' ligature. It was introduced by philologists around 1900 to replace the digraph ''hv'' 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 u ...
in the 1860s ( vol. 18).


Byzantine Ȣ

The Byzantines had a unique o-u ligature (Ȣ) that, while originally based on the Greek alphabet'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 GHA may refer to: Entertainment * ''Ghost Hunters Academy'', an American television series Government * Ghana Highways Authority * Gibraltar Health Authority * Wheatley Homes Glasgow (formerly "Glasgow Housing Association") Language * Gha ...
(ƣ), a rarely used letter based on Q and G, was misconstrued by the ISO to be an OI ligature because of its appearance, and is thus known (to the ISO and, in turn, Unicode) as "Oi". Historically, it was used in many Latin-based orthographies of
Turkic Turkic may refer to: * anything related to the country of Turkey * Turkic languages, a language family of at least thirty-five documented languages ** Turkic alphabets (disambiguation) ** Turkish language, the most widely spoken Turkic language * ...
(e.g.,
Azerbaijani Azerbaijani may refer to: * Something of, or related to Azerbaijan * Azerbaijanis * Azerbaijani language See also * Azerbaijan (disambiguation) * Azeri (disambiguation) * Azerbaijani cuisine * Culture of Azerbaijan The culture of Azerbaijan ...
) and other central Asian languages.


International Phonetic Alphabet

The
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
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 pair. ...
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 t ...
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 Internatio ...
contain three more: , and .


Initial Teaching Alphabet

The Initial Teaching Alphabet, a short-lived alphabet intended for young children, used a number of ligatures to represent long vowels: ꜷ, æ, œ, ᵫ, ꭡ, and ligatures for ee, ou and oi that are not encoded in Unicode. Ligatures for consonants also existed, including ligatures of ʃh, ʈh, wh, ʗh, ng and a reversed t with h (neither the reversed t nor any of the consonant ligatures are in Unicode).


Rare ligatures

Rarer ligatures also exist, such as ꜳ; ꜵ; ꜷ; ꜹ; ꜻ (barred ''av''); ꜽ; ꝏ, which is used in medieval Nordic languages for (a long close-mid back rounded vowel), as well as in some orthographies of the Massachusett language 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. In ...
); ᵺ; ỻ, which was used in
Medieval Welsh Middle Welsh ( cy, Cymraeg Canol, wlm, Kymraec) 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 ( cy, Hen ...
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 , ...
); ꜩ; ᴂ; ᴔ; and ꭣ.


Symbols originating as ligatures

The most common ligature is the
ampersand The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the conjunction "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters ''et''—Latin for "and". Etymology Traditionally in English, when spelling aloud, any letter that ...
&. This was originally a ligature of E and t, forming the Latin word "et", meaning "''and''". It has exactly the same use in
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
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. 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 ''&c'', pronounced " et cetera". In most fonts, 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 large 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 nineteen ...
, Trebuchet MS, and
Civilité 200px, Civilité types used in a French courtesy book (1785) Civilité type (french: Caractères de civilité) is a typeface introduced in 1557 by the French punchcutter Robert Granjon. These characters imitate French cursiva letters of the Ren ...
, known in modern times as the italic of Garamond). Similarly, the number sign # 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 telephones and as the
hashtag A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash (also known as pound or octothorpe) sign, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Instagram as a form of user-generated ...
indicator. The at sign @ is potentially a ligature, but there are many different theories about the origin. One theory says that the French word "à", meaning "''at''", was simplified by scribes who, instead of writing the grave accent, drew an arc around the "a". Another states that it is short for the Latin word for "toward", "''ad''", with the "d" being represented by the arc. Another says it is short for an abbreviation of the term "''each at''", with the "e" encasing the "a". Around the 18th century, it started being used in commerce to indicate price per unit, as "15 units @ $1". After the popularization of Email, this fairly unpopular character became widely known, used to tag specific users. The dollar sign $ 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 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 was sometimes symbolized by a ligature (from Pts), and the French franc was often symbolized by the ligature (from Fr). In astronomy, the planetary symbol for Mercury may be a ligature of
Mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...
's
caduceus The caduceus (☤; ; la, cādūceus, from grc-gre, κηρύκειον "herald's wand, or staff") is the staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology and consequently by Hermes Trismegistus in Greco-Egyptian mythology. The same staff was also ...
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 ϕ (phi) and κ (kappa). The symbol for Jupiter, , descends from a Greek zeta with a horizontal stroke, , as an abbreviation for ''Zeus''. Saturn's astronomical symbol ( 16px, ♄) has been traced back to the Greek Oxyrhynchus Papyri, where it can be seen to be a Greek
kappa Kappa (uppercase Κ, lowercase κ or cursive ; el, κάππα, ''káppa'') is the 10th 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 o ...
-
rho Rho (uppercase Ρ, lowercase ρ or ; el, ρο or el, ρω, label=none) is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 100. It is derived from Phoenician letter res . Its uppercase form uses the sa ...
with a horizontal stroke, as an abbreviation for (
Cronus In Ancient Greek religion and mythology, Cronus, Cronos, or Kronos ( or , from el, Κρόνος, ''Krónos'') was the leader and youngest of the first generation of Titans, the divine descendants of the primordial Gaia (Mother Earth) and ...
), the Greek name for the planet. It later came to look like a lower-case Greek
eta Eta (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἦτα ''ē̂ta'' or ell, ήτα ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative in most dialects, ...
, with the cross added at the top in the 16th century to Christianize it. The dwarf planet Pluto is symbolized by a PL ligature, ♇. A different PL ligature, ⅊, represents the property line in surveying. In engineering diagrams, a CL ligature, ℄, represents the center line of an object. The interrobang ‽ is an unconventional punctuation meant to combine the interrogation point (or the question mark) and the bang (printer's slang for exclamation mark) into one symbol, used to denote a sentence which is both a question and is exclaimed. For example, the sentence "Are you really coming over to my house on Friday‽" shows that the speaker is surprised while asking their question. Alchemy used a set of mostly standardized symbols, many of which were ligatures: 🜇 (AR, for aqua regia); 🜈 (S inside a V, for
aqua vitae ''Aqua vitae'' (Latin for "water of life") or aqua vita is an archaic name for a concentrated aqueous solution of ethanol. These terms could also be applied to weak ethanol without rectification. Usage was widespread during the Middle Ages a ...
); 🝫 (MB, for ary's bath a double boiler); 🝬 (VB, for , a steam bath); and 🝛 (''aaa'' with overline, 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 ...
).


Digraphs

Digraphs, such as '' ll'' in Spanish or
Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
, 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 '' ch'' and ''ll'' were considered separate letters in Spanish for collation 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

Dutch , however, is somewhat more ambiguous. Depending on the standard used, it can be considered a digraph, a ligature or a letter in itself, and its upper case and
lower case Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
forms are often available as a single glyph with a distinctive ligature in several professional fonts (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 uppercase glyphs, popular in the Netherlands, 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/typed as two separate letters, both should be capitalized – or both not – to form a correctly spelled word, like or ( ice).


Non-Latin alphabets

Ligatures are not limited to Latin script: *The Armenian alphabet has the following ligatures: և (ե+ւ), ﬔ (մ+ե), ﬕ (մ+ի), ﬓ (մ+ն), ﬗ (մ+խ), ﬖ (վ+ն) *The Brahmic abugidas 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 when writing Sanskrit than when writing Hindi. 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 group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
' 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 attached to them and displaying the following consonant in its standard form. *The Georgian script includes
Uni (asomtavruli , later , nuskhuri , later , mkhedruli 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 Vie (IPA: /'vi.e/), is a district (or ''qua ...
(uni), which is a combination of
Oni (asomtavruli , nuskhuri , mkhedruli 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. In the sys ...
(oni) and the former letter
Vie (asomtavruli , nuskhuri , mkhedruli ჳ) is the 22nd letter of the three Georgian scripts. In the system of Georgian numerals The Georgian numerals are the system of number names used in Georgian, a language spoken in the country of Georg ...
(vie). *A number of ligatures have been employed in the Greek alphabet, in particular a combination of omicron (Ο) and upsilon (Υ), which later gave rise to a letter of the Cyrillic script—see
Ou (letter) Ou (Majuscule: , Minuscule: ) is a Greek ligatures, ligature of the Greek alphabet, Greek letters omicron, ο and upsilon, υ which was frequently used in Byzantine Greek, Byzantine manuscripts. This ligature is still seen today on icon artwork ...
. Among the ancient Greek acrophonic numerals, 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.
Iotified In Slavic languages, iotation (, ) is a form of palatalization that occurs when a consonant comes into contact with a palatal approximant from the succeeding phoneme. The is represented by iota (ι) in the Cyrillic alphabet and the Greek alphab ...
Cyrillic letters are ligatures of the early Cyrillic decimal I and another vowel: , Ѥ, Ѩ, Ѭ, Ю (sometimes also spelled ЮУ). Two letters of the Bosnian, Macedonian and Serbian
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
alphabets, lje and
nje Nje (Њ њ; italics: ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is a ligature of the Cyrillic letters En and Soft Sign .Maretić, Tomislav. ''Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga književnog jezika''. 1899. It was invented by Vuk ...
(љ, њ), were developed in the nineteenth century as ligatures of Cyrillic El and En (л, н) with the soft sign (ь). Yae, a ligature of ya (Я) and e also exists: Ԙԙ, as do
Dzze Dzze (Ꚉ ꚉ; italics: ) is a letter of the old Abkhaz, Ossetic and Komi alphabets. It represents the voiced alveolo-palatal affricate (d͡ʑ). In Ossetian, it was later replaced with digraph ''dz'' (currently ''дз''). It is used to d ...
(Ꚉꚉ ← Д + З) and
Zhwe Zhwe (Ꚅ ꚅ; italics: ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. The shape of the letter originated as a ligature of the Cyrillic letters Ze (З з ) and Zhe (Ж ж ). Zhwe was used in the Abkhaz language where it represe ...
(Ꚅꚅ ← З + Ж). *Some forms of the Glagolitic 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 letters
aleph Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These letter ...
() and lamed () can form a ligature, . The ligature appears in some pre-modern texts (mainly religious), or in Judeo-Arabic texts, where that combination is very frequent, since '' -'' (written
aleph Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These letter ...
plus lamed, in the Hebrew script) is the definite article in Arabic. For example, the word ''
Allah Allah (; ar, الله, translit=Allāh, ) is the common Arabic word for God. In the English language, the word generally refers to God in Islam. The word is thought to be derived by contraction from '' al- ilāh'', which means "the god", an ...
'' () can be written with this ligature: . *In the Arabic alphabet, historically a
cursive Cursive (also known as script, among other names) 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 functionalit ...
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.mīm, 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 Lāmed , Aramaic Lāmadh , Syriac Lāmaḏ ܠ, Arabic , and Phoenician Lāmed . Its sound value is . The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Lambda (Λ), Lat ...
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 adapted by Arameans from the Phoenician alphabet and became a distinct script by the 8th century BC. It was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Fertil ...
, has three different scripts that all use ligatures. Like Arabic, 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 unaccompani ...
/ isolated and final: (Serto) , (Madnhaya) . Another popular one is
Taw Taw, tav, or taf is the twenty-second and last letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Tāw , Hebrew Tav , Aramaic Taw , Syriac Taw ܬ, and Arabic ت Tāʼ (22nd in abjadi order, 3rd in modern order). In Arabic, it is also gives ri ...
/ +
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 unaccompani ...
/, 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 (one of the main languages of South Asia), which uses a calligraphic version of the Arabic-based Nastaʿlīq script, 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, Balochi, Persian, Pashto and Arabic under Windows and Apple Mac. It was first deve ...
, a widely used desktop publishing tool for Urdu, uses
Nastaliq ''Nastaliq'' (; fa, , ), also romanized as ''Nastaʿlīq'', is one of the main calligraphic hands used to write the Perso-Arabic script in the Persian and Urdu languages, often used also for Ottoman Turkish poetry, rarely for Arabic. ''Nast ...
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 of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
a ligature of the American manual alphabet is used to sign "I love you", from the English
initialism An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
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 has a number of obsolete
kana ligature In the Japanese writing system are ligatures in the kana writing system, both hiragana and katakana. Kana such as and are not kana ligatures, but polysyllabic kana. Hardly any kana ligatures or polysyllabic kana are represented in standard ch ...
s. Of these, only two are widely available ones on computers: one for hiragana, , which is a vertical writing ligature of the characters
よ, in hiragana or ヨ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. The hiragana is made in two strokes, while the katakana in three. Both represent []. When small and preceded by an -i kana, this kana represents ...
and Ri (kana), り; and one for katakana, Koto (kana), ヿ, 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 texts ligatures are common. Such ligatures are known as bind-runes and were optional.


Chinese ligatures

Written Chinese has a long history of creating new characters by merging parts or wholes of other Chinese characters. However, a few of these combinations do not represent morphemes 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 is the festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar and solar Chinese calendar. In Chinese and other East Asian cultures, the festival is commonly referred to as the Spring Festival () as ...
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 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, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...
, the
Grass Mud Horse The Grass Mud Horse or Cǎonímǎ () is a Chinese Internet meme based on a pun. Homophonic puns in Standard Chinese delight many Chinese people, and they have become an important component of Chinese culture. It is a word play on the Mandarin w ...
, 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 for
SI units The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes Pleonasm#Acronyms and initialisms, pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most wid ...
. 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


Computer typesetting

The OpenType 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 g ...
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 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. These can be enabled or disabled in CSS3 using font-feature-settings.


TeX

Opinion is divided over whether it is the job of writers or typesetters to decide where to use ligatures. TeX is an example of a computer typesetting system that makes use of ligatures automatically. The Computer Modern Roman typeface provided with TeX includes the five common ligatures ff, fi, fl, ffi, and ffl. When TeX finds these combinations in a text, it substitutes the appropriate ligature, unless overridden by the typesetter.


CSS

CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...
supports font-variant-ligatures. common-ligatures, discretionary-ligatures, historical-ligatures and contextual are supported.


Ligatures in Unicode (Latin alphabets)

This table below shows discrete letter pairs on the left, the corresponding Unicode ligature in the middle column, and the Unicode code point on the right. Provided you are using an operating system and browser that can handle Unicode, and have the correct Unicode fonts installed, some or all of these will display correctly. See also the provided graphic. Unicode 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 very different conc ...
. 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 disables ligature substitution by default, largely for backward compatibility 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 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 points for the digraph DZ, the Dutch digraph IJ, and for the Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian digraphs DŽ, LJ, and NJ. Although similar, these are digraphs, not ligatures. See Digraphs in Unicode. ; Ligatures used only in phonetic transcription : Four "ligature ornaments" are included from U+1F670 to U+1F673 in the
Ornamental Dingbats Ornamental Dingbats is a Unicode block containing ornamental leaves, punctuation, and ampersands, quilt squares, and checkerboard patterns. It is a subset of dingbat fonts Webdings, Wingdings, and Wingdings 2. History The following Unicode- ...
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, as can be illustrated by Chinese artist Xu Bing's work in which he combines Latin letters to form characters that resemble Chinese.


See also

* * * * Scribal abbreviations (Roman and medieval abbreviations used to save space in manuscripts and epigraphs) * * * *


Notes and references


Notes


References


External links


Examples of CSS ligatures
{{Typography terms Palaeography Typography