Talk:Ligature (writing)

Image Caption


There seems to be some confusion about the image at the top of the page, which is a ligature of a long s ("ſ") and an i (as identified in the image description). Knulclunk changed the caption to identify it as a fi ligature which is incorrect due to the lack of a cross-bar. The long s has a nub on its left side at cross-bar height, which adds to the confusion. markegli (talk) 19:01, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

==Meme-in-the-making: Oh my FDF2 (OMﷲ). Oh my Allah, to be used in Middle-East contexts. RussianReversal (talk) 03:10, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Perhaps we should use this "ft" ligature instead to avoid confusion.--Knulclunk (talk) 21:35, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

"ß"
Originally, the German letter "ß" was a "long s" -- "small s" ligature. – Torsten Bronger 07:18, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * I was going to make the same comment. Historically, ß was a ligature:


 * [[Image:szlig.jpg]]


 * -- Dominus 05:52, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Exactly. I think the situation is as follows: Historically it is an &#383;–s-Ligature.  But in old Gothic types this ligature could be mistaken for an sz.  Willberg has a convincing figure in his book "Schriften erkennen" that illustrates this.


 * This mis-interpretation made many typographers to cut typefaces with a real sz ligature, especially in the post-Gothic era, when this mixing-up wouldn't have occcur actually since the Antiqua typefaces are very clear.


 * So, although it bases on a mis-interpretation, it has happened some 600 years ago, and it is valid to say that the "ß" may also be an sz ligature. In Times New Romen, it's an sz, in Garamond it's an &#383;s. – Torsten Bronger 07:31, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Table
"Not all browser/operating system combinations will render the table correctly". Can someone make graphics? They definitely don't all show up on mine. - Omegatron


 * Is that really needed? Surely it is obvious what these ligatures looks like: 'oe' looks like an e connected to an o. Jor 17:39, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * well, they vary from just two letters stuck together (the A and E being "tipped" for instance), and the article that directed me to this article had a ligature "st" mentioned with an arc over the letters or something, and i was wondering what it looked like. The html version doesn't show up in my browser.  I think that is reason enough to have graphics.  I will do it eventually if no one else will. - Omegatron


 * I substituted a bitmap for the character table. – Torsten Bronger 20:07, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Nice work on the graphic, however I am re-adding the table. If only because the characters there can be copy&pasted by anyone if wanted. Jor 20:26, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"W"
Removed:
 * Thus our w is also a ligature.

Eh? -- Karada 00:26, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * It's not difficult to see what whoever wrote this had in mind, but I agree that "w" is not a ligature. I have just learned, however, that it is an approximant, which has got to count for something. -- Itai 00:36, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"fffl"
Somewhere it could be noted that in older German spelling there was (purportedly) a need for an fffl ligature for one compound word: Sauerstoffflasche, meaning oxygen tank. This has since been reformed to Sauerstofflasche under a rule that triple letters are to be avoided. --FOo 20:07, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Can you find a source for that? Sounds odd, but just may be true :-) &mdash; Jor (Talk) 20:21, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * First, Sauerstoffflasche has always been spelt like that, it wasn't affected by the reform. Secondly, due to (probably not only) German rules ligatures are broken up at sub-word boundaries, so it's merely an "ff" ligature followed by an "fl" ligature. – Torsten Bronger 07:33, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that's a point, Torsten. I just wanted to note the same, that the paragraph
 * The Requiem Italic by Jonathan Hoefler is probably the only font that has designed the extremely rare fffl ligature, to be used at least in two German words: Sauerstoffflasche (oxygen tank) and Sauerstoffflaschenspuler (oxygen tank cleanser). This same typeface has plenty of other unusual ligatures, such as stfl for "mistflower", cta for "octagon", ttfr for "Gottfried", a German name, tfl for "outflanked", sfy for "satisfying", ctfi for "factfinding", stfi for "Eastfield" and stfj for "Vestfjorden", and many others.

simply contains false information. According to German typographical tradition ligatures are not allowed over morpheme boundaries, such also not over word boundaries in case of compound words. Thus, fffl would NOT be used in Sauerstoffflasche, and similarly, ttfr would not be used in Gottfried (rather tt + fr ligature, if any). I do believe, that the original editor (or if he took the examples from the font's description) was just trying to find some examples "with brute force" without knowing (German) typography well. Which is a don't-don't concerning an article dealing with... well, typography (as Ligatures do). I'm definitely going to remove the examples at least, if I do not encounter objection. Szabi 12:05, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, it's not really false information. For artistic reasons, it may well be appropriate to use these ligatures.  It doesn't claim that they are mandatory after all.  However, it is not really clear either, so a clarification would certainly be helpful.  – Torsten Bronger 12:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

good article
fascinating. i am such a nerd. good work all. 141.211.231.113 01:17, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ehm, it is not under the good article criterias. --Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 16:53, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Cyrillic letters != ligatures
Article says that Ы Ю Я are ligatures, but they are not. They are regular Cyrillic letters.


 * Yozh 01:08, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
 * they originated as ligatures, just like w. dab (&#5839;) 12:54, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Missing info
In the article:

Formerly there were the additional members for "fa", "fe", "fo", ...

What happened to these ligatures? The paragraph is incomplete.

"fj"
What about "fjord"? That's an English word. æle ✆ 01:18, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Some newspapers, such as the Economist, use a ligature for fj, precisely for the word fjord. It looks nice and clean. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.204.249.9 (talk) 21:42, 25 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Calibri also has an fj ligature, as well as ti and tt. I cannot find the glyph codes though. Mathi80 (talk) 09:20, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
 * It may be that the close fitting is done in software that recognises these pairs of letters and changes the default spacing. See proportional spacing? AFAICS, all the latin small ligatures are in the block U+FB00 to U+FB12, of which only FB00 to FB06 are assigned. There is not even an fj glyph, let alone tt. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:22, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The ligatures in fonts are probably either PUAs or made via ZWJ. The assigned ligatures in Unicode are actually quite rarely supported. ― Ö S M A N (talk · contribs) 12:35, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Arabic ligature
I would argue that the article's description of ligature in the Arabic script is not quite accurate. "And in the Arabic alphabet, which has a very "fluid" shape, there is usually ligature between every single letter." however, the article describes a ligature as "two or more letterforms...written or printed as a unit."

As a rule, when Arabic letters are connected, they are not truly written or printed as a unit. It is much like Cursive writing in English (and others). In a cursive English font, for instance, there is not a keystroke or character for every combination of adjancent letter, each is simply designed so that when they touch, the letter will still be connected. Granted, Arabic has several forms of each letter, such that a letter is writen differently depending on whether it comes first, last, or in the middle of a word or near a non-connecting letter.

There is (at least) one true ligature in Arabic, which is the "Laam-Alif", two letters with sounds similar to our English "L" and "A". The ligature is used often, most frequently when a noun beginning with Alif is made definite (and therefore the "Alif-Laam" definite article is added before the initial Alif of the word). Also, with the proper vocalization, "Laam-Alif" is the Modern Standard Arabic word for "No". Some Arabic keyboards also have a ligature for the name of God, the Shahadah, and the blessings spoken and written after mentioning a Prophet or companion of the Prophet.


 * You are correct. The sentence you reference does not make sense, and was clearly written by someone who did not read the first sentence of this article.  I am going to remove it and replace it with a separate one-sentence-long paragraph mentioning the Laam-Alif ligature.

Cal 18:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Emigre: Mrs Eaves
I do not understand the relevence of the link to the Mrs. Eaves typeface in the external links section and am curious if it is spam. However, I don't really know.


 * Mrs Eaves is well-known amongst typographers for its superfluous ligatures. jr98664 06:34, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

"AE" / "OE"
æ (e dans l'a in french) is not a true ligature. It is really a regular letter. In caps, it is a regular lettre too. It would not be true if it was a ligature. 62.212.120.116 16:07, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Dutch "ij"?
It says: "The letter ĳ is derived from "II" (double-I), and has similarly a distinct letter in Dutch."

This is confusing to me--I don't know what "the letter ij" refers to, and in Dutch I thought that "ij" was written like a "y" with umlauts...so what do 'l's have to do with it? Critic9328 05:36, 28 March 2006 (UTC)


 * IJ is not written as ÿ in Dutch, except in some limited (pre-Unicode) 8-bit encodings, and then unofficially. The letter ij is considered a single letter in Dutch by most, just like the German ß(a ſz ligature) is by most German.
 * Before spelling was centralized IJ was also written y, ii, iy, etc.—but this is meaningless in modern Dutch. Afrikaans, which developed out of contact between Dutch and African languages, uses an y where comparable Dutch words use ij. ÿ was, I believe, never used until mechanical typewriters and later PCs came about. And even most mechanical typewriters sold in the Netherlands include(d) an IJ key.
 * That IJ developed out of an II (double I) ligature is well attested from early and middle Dutch texts. I'm not sure why you believe the letter L has anything to do with this, perhaps your browser is configured to use a font where lowercase L and uppercase i are identical? -- Jordi&middot; ✆ 12:13, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
 * ß is not considered a letter in German (except by people who do not make the distinction between 'letter' and 'ligature', of course). Case in point, it is equivalent to ss in alphabetical order. Otoh, ä, ö, ü are borderline cases, they may be considered independent letters, or equivalent to ae, oe, ue, or again equivalent to a, o, u (viz., in alphabetical order) in German. dab (&#5839;) 12:53, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Numero sign?
Is the numero sign a ligature? —mjb 07:38, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * No. It is a number-like symbol. -- Jordi&middot; ✆ 12:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
 * what's "number-like" about it? dab (&#5839;) 12:56, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * That the Unicode Consortium has put it in a certain block does not preclude it from being a ligature because of it's form (shape) or use. It certainly appears to be a ligature, but that's just my casual opinion.  You'd need a source before putting that in the article. Senator2029  “Talk”   01:20, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

W "not a tue ligature"?

 * While VV developed into W, the modern Latin letter W is not a true ligature as it represents a different sound from VV/UU.

Well, so do Æ and Œ, in several languages... FilipeS 16:16, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 * true, that's not a point at all. English doesn't even have the digraph uu, and vv only for purely orthographical reasons. dab (&#5839;) 16:36, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Merge
On Ligature (palaeography) there's a long-standing proposal to merge it with this article. I agree. We can't explain typographical ligatures without explaining handwritten ligatures first, and parts of this article devoted to handwritten ligatures are much longer than entire Ligature (palaeography) article. I propose name "Ligature (writing)". Nikola 05:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

While I agree that ligatures had their origins in manuscripts, the development of moveable type created a new artistic field. Merging typographical ligatures with paleographic ligatures would have the same implication as merging calligraphy with desktop publishing. 41.242.15.146 11:02, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * But we can't even explain well what a typographical ligature is without going first through handwritten ligatures, and that article currently is a single-sentenct stub. Nikola 10:20, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate that. Shouldn't the paleographic information be expanded or the information on the typographic ligature page be appended onto the paleographic page instead of merging them. 41.242.15.146 11:00, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Agree with the merger [edit, I just note that it is even my own suggestion]: the point is that Ligature (palaeography) is just a stub. Make it a h2 section here. If it grows larger, it can always be made a full article again and linked with main. dab (𒁳) 12:50, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Cyrillic ligatures
What about the Cyrillic characters Љ and Њ? AWN2 01:13, 18 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Ligatures of ЛЬ and НЬ, they're in the article. Nikola 10:21, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Dollar sign
Amended to say $ "probably" originated as a ligature, as the article lists several other possibilities. Rojomoke 10:02, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Swedish ligatures?
The article lists swedish as a language with special ligatures but does not give any example. The swedish alphabet has a-z and three additional characters ÅÄÖ (åäö). It don't think any of these are ligatures, am I missing something? Foolip 09:26, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

From the article "In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more letter-forms are joined as a single glyph." Matt (talk) 23:13, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure there exist any academic sources for this (I'm not a scholar). But it is quite evident when you read a lot of older scribbles, manuscripts and books in Swedish. I've added Nordisk familjebok as one source. That is the closest thing to an authorative source that I can find (not that it is worse than 99% of the other "authoritive" sources on wikipedia).

The Ä and Ö started as AE and OE. They evolved to Ä and Ö pretty much the same as in German. If you like to see a middleform you can look at Bureus' Runa ABC boken. It is also printed in that oddball fractura currensis (I'm not sure of the Latin spelling, but I'm pretty sure there is no English word for this writing form, kurrentfraktur is the Swedish word (there are German kurrents but they are generally not fraktures, and vice versa)), that became predominant in print of Swedish printed text for decades after he invented it.

The Å started as AA. Swedish had a change in pronounciation (stora vokaldansen) and needed to be able to depict more sounds in writting and still keep old writing readable. Å was one of the devices that was invented to come to terms with this. Runa ABC boken, previously mentioned, use another competing letter form, an A with another A on top.

--Se mj (talk) 09:20, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Spanish DE ligature


Here is a photo of the Spanish DE ligature which I've now seen three times. This one is from a hand-painted sign in Oaxaca state, Mexico. I've also seen it used in an azulejo either in Spain or Mexico but can't remember the details.

In any case I can't find much information on this ligature on the Internet and I believe it's not covered by Unicode.

&mdash; Hippietrail (talk) 20:48, 21 May 2008 (UTC)


 * cervantesvirtual.com uses the DE ligature as their favicon logo
 * &mdash; Hippietrail (talk) 09:54, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It is awefully similar to the capital eth and may just be incorrect usage, just like thorn (letter) is used incorrectly as a funky p in some places, D with stroke (disambiguation) mentions this ligature but may be an edit after this entry?
 * I am asking as it appears to be a ligature of two capital letters, which is unusual. as the convention that you can write solely in upper caps is a recent one, with the exception of monument inscriptions ( Capital letters (majuscules) was the alphabet written on Roman inscriptions, later in manuscripts they warped and became minuscules with the first letter of the page being a lettera notabilior (often gilded, with pictures etc) often similar to the inscriptional letters (or not), which confused people in the renaissance who created upper and lower case. ). As mentioned in Scribal abbreviation, de- can be written with a minuscule d with a stroke. --Squidonius (talk) 21:14, 5 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I first became aware of the DE ligature when I saw the signs in New Orleans' French Quarter, like this one. Fishal (talk) 01:42, 13 September 2011 (UTC)BourbonCalleSpanishTiles.JPG
 * Entrada_Virrey_Arzobispo_Morcillo.jpg[[File:Joaquin Antonio Arias de Saavedra y Santa Cruz. V Marques del Moscoso y XIII Conde de Castellar. Escuela Española. 1785. Anónimo. Colección M. Mosocoso.jpg|thumb|centre]]


 * These two paintings (early and late 18th century, respectively) display both the DE ligature and upper-case-only captions.--179.6.199.229 (talk) 08:18, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

This ligature is everywhere on street signs in Villa de Leyva, Colombia. --190.130.64.135 (talk) 16:03, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Ligature, diphthong and historical confusion
This page is seriously confused in its presentation of 'common' ligatures and their equivalents. We should be drawing a greater distinction between presentation ligatures, diphthong ligatures and historical ligatures:

Presentational: Any 'ffi' run can be replaced by its ligature, and vice versa.

Diphthong: Letters such as 'æ' can be replaced by 'ae' but NOT vice versa (in general).

Historical: Letters and symbols such as 'W' and '&' may once have been ligatures, but can no longer be considered so.

The table is misleading and the graphic is ridiculous ('Et -> &' - really? So 'Ethanol' can be typeset '&hanol' can it?)

nemo (talk) 13:59, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Unicode
Latin-Extended D has a number of weird vowel ligatures, viz.:

aa, ao, au, av, ay, oo, vy (U+A732-A73D, A74E/A74F and A760/A761)

I can guess their origin in medieval hand-lettering – they were just less popular than æ and œ. Should these be mentioned?212.137.63.86 (talk) 14:42, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd suggest that it's time to refrain from adding mention of yet more ligatures to the article unless they shed some new light on the greater topic. After all, the abbreviation article doesn't contain every abbreviation ever used (nor should it). &#8212;Largo Plazo (talk) 18:34, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

So what to do with "novel" ligatures?
What should we do with all the "novel" ligatures (e.&thinsp;g Spanish DE ligature) that are posted on this talk page? Are there any historic infos on them? Should we mention them somewhere under a "modern ligatures"-section? —  Tirk·ﬂ  “…” 11:35, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * There is nothing new or novel about the Spanish DE ligature. It is in fact very old and out of fashion. It is so rare now that I can't find much information on the Internet. In my ongoing investigations I today received from a typographer that "It is still used occasionally today to give a formal appearance, at least in Spain. As for the time period, I study golden age lit where it was used heavily (also ß for ss)". Modern / novel ligatures would not interest me in the same way. &mdash; Hippietrail (talk) 12:19, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I did not suppose that it would be really "novel", therefore the double quotes. Shouldn't we add it to the article and "revive" its use? —  Tirk·ﬂ  “…” 22:22, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I would like to but I know so little about it. There is no Unicode support, no mention of it in the RAE dictionary, very few discussions on the net, and the ones I have found ask more questions than they provide answers. Besides the photo I took myself I have only found two other images and I've requested permission to use one on the wikis. I have been told that I would find examples on www.cervantesvirtual.com but I've had not luck so far. In Australia the internet buckling under heave usage for the holidays it seems. And now I hear Spanish also used "ß" which I have never seen! We don't yet have enough info to put in the article... &mdash; Hippietrail (talk) 23:26, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The RAE concerns itself more with the everyday language than anything. Since a DE ligature is impossible to type, it would essentially fall out of their self-imposed scope.  I will send them a query on it though.  To be precise, Unicode *does* support it, because the DE ligature is simply a presentation form for U+0044 U+0045.  Any OpenType font can be set up apply the ligature regardless of the fact that the text is split into two letters.  Re the ß, Spanish, like most (all?) Latin-script langauges used the mixed form for s, with both s and ſ being used.  While in modern Spanish this would be a non-issue for causing a ligation, given that modern Spanish does not use a double s, in older Spanish it was common (pasar --> passar in old Spanish) and occasionally, and almost always in italic faces, would get the two letters ligated into an eszett.  It did not serve a different fonetic function, as you could find, for example, the previous example written "passar", "paßar", "paſsar" and "paſſar" (but not pasſar, as far as I've ever seen).  If you look hard enough you'll find the eszett used in almost any language that allowed double s (English included).  If you go down the A6 in Spain near the Aravaca/Pozuelo exit there's a place called Casa de Monaco which uses the lig.  If you go to the center of Madrid, on the street signs you'll find more than just the DE ligature. Matthew Stuckwisch (talk) 08:30, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Handwritten Dutch ij
The article currently uses capital Y and small ÿ in a 'script' font to illustrate what handwritten IJ and ij look like. This is bad. Most computers do not have a font named 'script' installed. So the actually used typeface varies. And chance is small that a calligraphic-style typeface is used. The displayed Y and ÿ simply end up nowhere resembling handwritten IJ and ij. I would suggest that someone contribute a photo showing Dutch handwriting. IMHO, that is even better than an image created from some digitalized typeface. Kxx (talk) 07:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

We could use this image. It's not great (apparently written using the mouse), but it can be a placeholder until there is a better illustration. --dab (𒁳) 08:11, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * That's simply awful. There are better images on the article about Ĳ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%B2 Tohuvabohuo (talk) 23:26, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Inability for viewers to render all characters/ligatures within this article
While reviewing this article, I noted that several sentences, such as this one:
 * "Rarer ligatures also exist, such as Ꜳꜳ, Ꜵꜵ, Ꜷꜷ, Ꜹꜹ, Ꜻꜻ, Ꜽꜽ, Ꝏꝏ, ᵫ, ᵺ, Ỻỻ and Ꜩꜩ."

....did not render properly (except for the eight and ninth characters/ligatures) on my Windows based Internet Explorer and Firefox viewers. On my IE browser, all unrendered characters are represented by single empty rectangles. On my Firefox viewer, each Unicode character is represented by a double set of rectangles, ex: the first character represented by a pair of rectangles, after the words 'such as', contained the code pair: A732 and A733.

What setting or LIP needs to implemented to properly view all characters or ligatures within the article? Also, would it be possible to add a warning/caution notice at the top of the article page to inform readers that certain viewing parameters need to be met for a complete rendering of the article? Such caution boxes exist on other articles containing uncommon scripts. Thanks --HarryZilber (talk) 15:10, 9 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I have added SpecialChars to the lead section. The ligatures in the quoted sentence probably should go into the table under the Ligatures in Unicode (Latin-derived alphabets) section for better presentation.Kxx (talk) 18:53, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


 * For Windows, I suggest using the "Identify Characters" add-on to Firefox, followed by the latest version of "Babel Map" which includes a tool to tell you which fonts contain some specific character. I've seen a funny char once that simply looked wrong in the font that was chosen (Firefox will apparently look for some font containing a rare character), as well as letters that simply aren't in any installed font.

Swedish and W: We used to spell with WH and W too
F, FV, V, W and WH was used in Swedish to depict different sounds now all spelled with V; with slightly different spelling in different dialects (we didn't have one standard spelling, every large publisher had one of its own). Those sounds are still present in most Swedish dialects, not in the dialects around our capital city or the most southern parts of Sweden, though. In the 1889 spelling reform they were all replaced by V.

The use of W and WH corresponded pretty close to that in modern day English spelling. Whenever I have to write an English word and I'm not sure of how to spell, I say the corresponding Swedish word out loud in my dialect and can usually hear/feel how it should be spelled (even better than if I hear the word in English spoken by somebody else), at least when it comes to V, W, WH, T and TH (modern Swedish usually spell "English TH" with T or D). (English could easily be mistaken as a very simplistic Swedish dialect, the only difference is: English has changed the meaning of old words more than Swedish, no use of tonality whatsoever, less then half of the Swedish speech sounds, different spelling, a lot of grammar missing, the few preposition left is put to random new use, few composite words, and it has a much smaller common vocabulary. Old English actually feels closer to modern Swedish dialects than to modern English. ;-)

I'm not sure this old use of W is worth incorporating in this article though. The Swedish Wikipedia article on the Swedish spelling reform of 1889 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Se mj (talk • contribs) 19:57, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

The ct ligature
Does anybody have the numeric character reference for the ct ligature? I have thus far been unable to find it. If anybody knows what it is, I would recommend adding it to the article.

Thanks, 98.117.49.203 (talk) 08:31, 4 August 2010 (UTC)


 * This why I'm here, too. I am transcribing some English grave markers from the 17th Century where many of the carvings use that "ct" ligature. I see it briefly mentioned in this article as found in the Linux Libertine font, but it remains unnamed. There's an illustration that includes it; the caption says that it's available in Adobe Caslon Pro font, but again, it's unnamed. I don't see it when scanning through the Unicode Tables, but then I don't know its name in order to search properly. What is this ligature called? Thank you, Wordreader (talk) 21:29, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
 * The ct ligature does not have a Unicode code point of its own. Instead, you have to activate the fonts' OpenType feature  ("Historic Ligatures") to convert ct into a ligature. This short PDF file describes how to procede in LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org (set the font family to   instead of  ), and this webpage introduces CSS code that handles OpenType features on the Web (use  ). Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 05:02, 28 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you, LiliCharlie, for the information. You have added to my skills-set. The cemetery that I am transcribing is in England; I am transcribing the grave markers from the 1600s. So far, all the legible ones I have recorded use that ligature every time a "c" and "t" appear together. A very popular ligature, at least locally. Yours, Wordreader (talk) 06:43, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
 * , a bit off-topic but if you're interested in evoking the mood of 17th-19th century gravestones I hugely recommend Paul Barnes' professional digital font family Chiswick Text (no commercial interest). It has a colossal range of alternate characters (starting on p. 21 of the pdf specimen) intended to capture every kind of British vernacular lettering, much of it inspired by the research of James Mosley. (It has seven different versions of the upright 'g' and another six in italic, to give you some idea of how much, as well as adaptations to four different sizes of text...) It was originally done as a project for the National Trust and it might be a bit overkill for hobbyist use-it really needs pro DTP software to access all the alt characters-but it's worth knowing about if this is something that interests you. Blythwood (talk) 09:50, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Great font. I haven't tested, but Chiswick Text seems to use the OT feature  ("Discretionary Ligatures"; registered by Microsoft) instead of   (registered by Adobe) for ligated ct, sp, and st. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 12:42, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Fonts from Adobe have these special characters mapped into the "private use area" section. They also include small caps, lowercase numerals and artistic variations of some initial letters. They can be inserted directly without special support in the word processor, and thus work in old versions too. The numbers are specific to the particular font or family. In "Adobe Garamond Pro" ct is at 0xE076 (). -- J7n (talk) 11:54, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Just a word of caution when using codepoints from the Private Use Areas range: these are not generally interchangeable between any arbitrary pair of users. What you see at 0xE076 (for example) may not be what I get (because whatever I'm using may have allocated that codepoint for something completely different). It will be ok if you print it of course – but if you are getting it printed commercially, you will need to forewarn the printer to preload that Adobe font. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:20, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

List of Ligatures
Does Wikipedia have a List of Ligatures?--92.228.224.64 (talk) 02:29, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't that be impossible, since different typefaces and different languages, all require different ligatures; the possible variations is infinite. But someone could of course write lists of common ligatures and there are already lists on wikipedia with scribal abbrevations.
 * If someone makes a list of ligatures: fä, fö, fü, få, fj, ffä, ffö, et c. is often missing in digital fonts made outside Scandinavia, but is as necessary as fi, ffi, etc. when typesetting Scandinavian languages (the ones with ä and ö is only needed in German, Swedish, and Finnish, the other ones are needed in Swedish, Finnish (not sure if fj is needed in Finnish), Norweigian, and Danish). Another thing about languages that use composite words (like the Scandinavian languges), is that ligatures make text harder to read if they make it hard to distinguish between the word components, i.e. when reading "het(-)sporr(-)en" ("the hotspur" in Swedish) when a ts-ligature is used, it is very easy to read it as "hets(-)porr(-)en" (stressful/group pressure induced pornography/sex); fi, ffi- and st-ligatures is another source of constant amusement.--Se mj (talk) 14:19, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * In fä, fö ligatures, does the hook of f absorb one of the dots, as it does in fi? —Tamfang (talk) 19:27, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

conventions note: used
Even though "long s" ſ has otherwise disappeared from German orthography, ß is still considered a ligature, and is replaced by 'SS' or 'SZ' (to preserve long vowel-short vowel conventions note: used in Austria) in capitalized spelling and in alphabetic ordering What does the parenthesis mean? Does it merely need competent punctuation? —Tamfang (talk) 19:21, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

ct, st: why?
One understands why f and long ſ are often printed as parts of ligatures, but why ct and st? Is it only because these are common clusters? And what's the point of the loop atop these ligatures: is it to remind the printer that they are ligatures, or is it a relic of something scribes did, and if so why did the scribes do it?

If the article already explains this and I couldn't find it, I beg forgiveness. —Tamfang (talk) 19:13, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

As far as writing at least „st“, „ch“, „ck“, „tz“ as ligatures in german language (I am austrian) is concerned it is simmilar to “th” in the english language: it is the way to write consonants down, for which there is no single letter. But these letter-combinations do not automatically mean, that it is one consonant—e.g. „austauschen“ means („au“ „s“)(„t“ „au“ „sch“ „e“ „n“) (“exchange”): note that this would not be written „auſtau…“ and not „auﬅau…“ (ſ-t-ligature) but „austau…“ as „aus“ is a prefix and by that the „s“ at its end is at the end of a syllable. Btw: „au“ is a diphthong. E.g. „feﬅ“ (“firm”) uses an s-t-ligature. E.g. „auch“ (“also”) is constructed by two sounds: „au“ and „ch“ The „st“-ligature is a late invention and seems to mimic the „ſt“ („ﬅ“)-ligature—therefore the “loop”: a ligature is written without lifting the pen (mostly).

Kal666 (talk) 16:52, 11 February 2019 (UTC)


 * I have noticed that in Fraktur ch, ck, tz often appear to be ligatures, or at least very tightly kerned; but they have no extra stroke as sometimes appears in st, ct. —Tamfang (talk) 20:35, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Oftentimes they were just a type designers artistry, because it just looked better that way. it maybe considered as kerning taken even further. Take fi for example (mono font chosen for clarity). The upper terminal of the f would have an ugly collision with the dot of the I, so just combine them. Bravo! 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:43, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I'll assume that fi is somehow relevant to my question about ct,st and I'm too thick to see how. —Tamfang (talk) 00:58, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Number one rule of a political answer: don't answer the question you are asked, just answer the question you wanted to have been asked. Guilty as charged. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:37, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Also, don't forget that Fraktur means "broken" (as opposed to cursive). Each letter should be distinct. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:45, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Silly me, I thought it meant that the smooth arcs of otherwise rounded letters are broken. —Tamfang (talk) 01:00, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
 * You may very well be right, because my assertion is not based on any reliable source (though I have searched the web) and inference from Antiqua–Fraktur dispute. Do you have any support for your take on it? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:37, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

German ß
German ß is not part of the alphabet. ä, ö, ü aren't part of the alphabet either. The German alphabet has 26 letters. The special letters aren't included in the alphabet, but they exist. French theoretically has 42 letters, but letters like é, è, ê are not part of the alphabet. That's another example. --2.245.106.53 (talk) 12:40, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Norwegian kjell (kj)
Just suggesting a cross-reference to the Norwegian Kjell (letter), used in Nynorsk and occassionally in Bokmål. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.90.242.55 (talk) 18:26, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

What does this mean?
The first sentence under Massachusett ꝏ reads -

"In the colonial orthography created by John Eliot, later used in the first Bible printed in the Americas, the Massachuset-language Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God published in 1663, although Eliot had previously translated catechisms and published books of the Bible as well as trained Indians to become literate who in turn trained others."

But what does it mean? - It has no predicate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:16B8:46AD:3F00:EDE0:1382:28C5:848E (talk) 12:10, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Good question. I've attempted to untangle it a bit, leaving out some of the background covered by the "Massachusett writing systems" article linked at the start of the sentence. Nitpicking polish (talk) 14:37, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Nemo, it can
Ethanol can be written &anol, if you really want it to! it was talking about it's origin, but it is no longer used that way. if you looked at the ꝏ section, sometimes they're used in other ways. 73.231.181.239 (talk) 18:12, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

what about the korean vowel ligeratures?
like ae, yae etc. the ladder looking things. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.7.165.189 (talk) 18:22, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Ladder looking things like ㅐ ae and ㅒ yae. Don't know if they belong here or not. Troll Control (talk) 23:28, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 17 March 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: No Consensus User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 02:14, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Orthographic ligature → Typographic ligature – Apparently the article was boldly moved from "Typographic ligature" to "Orthographic ligature" a couple years ago, and I don't think that was well founded. Not all ligatures are orthographic. The ligature "&#xFB01;" and the non-joined "fi" are mere variants and neither is more "correct" than the other (unlike "œ" vs "oe" in some orthographies). If the concern is that "typographic" excludes handwriting (though I doubt it does), we could instead choose Ligature (writing) or something to that effect. Nardog (talk) 10:14, 17 March 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. ~ Aseleste  (t, e &#124; c, l) 05:24, 25 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Support Definitely not a orthographic thing—blindlynx (talk) 15:09, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I do not believe "orthography" refers only to "correctness", but I do think that "typography" cannot designate handwriting. So Ligature (writing) is probably best. 98.143.65.225 (talk) 17:09, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It more or less refers to spelling in this case—blindlynx (talk) 14:05, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: WikiProject Typography has been notified of this discussion. ~  Aseleste  (t, e &#124; c, l) 05:27, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , there is no wikiproject:calligraphy but maybe the calligraphers need to be notified too? but if you do, then so do typographers who don't subscribe the typography wikiproject. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:11, 31 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Support Neutral. There are solid arguments for both perspectives but what swings it for me is that modern usage of the term is all about typography. If someone hand-writes, for example, the world letter and uses a single stroke to cross both ts at once, a graphologist would categorise that as a ligature but for the rest of us it is just a gesture. In modern English, there are no formal ligatures with significant usage, although there are a few holdouts for $⟨œ⟩$ (ae), notably Encyclopœdia. In French, $⟨œ⟩$ (oe) is still very much part of language, see Œ, so this is may still be seen in handwriting. (I notice that  does not appear on the AZERTY keyboard.) Of course Old and Middle English do use ligatures but it seems to me to be undue to give that weight in comparison to typographic usage. Coming back to the definition of Orthography as stated in this article:
 * "An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language. It includes norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation."


 * I note that ligatures are not mentioned, nor would I expect them to be, being way down in the fine detail and presumably encompassed by "norms of spelling". What I did not expect, though, was that the word 'ligature' is not even mentioned: I suggest that just about sums up its importance to orthography. Conversely in typography, all sorts of stylistic ligatures are being created, it is almost a given for any decorative typeface. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:11, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I have withdrawn my opposition using the simple rule: how would I feel about the opposite proposal, move to Ligature (Calligraphy)? I would oppose vigorously but the case is just as convincing to an editor whose background is calligraphy rather than typography. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:57, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
 * But ligatures were very common in the manuscript age. Why should this article be only about typography? 98.143.65.225 (talk) 16:00, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * And still are common in calligraphy. Which is why I've withdrawn my support. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:57, 7 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Oppose on balance. Ligatures originate in writing, not printing, and their use in typography is generally an attempt to simulate the conventions of writing. Blythwood (talk) 16:28, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Was (an attempt to emulate) would be more accurate and you would certainly be correct from Gutenberg to maybe as recently ten years ago. Modern decorative digital typefaces do things that would be wildly impractical to do, certainly to sustain, with a pen. Do a google search for ligature font then 'images' to see today's reality. Conversely to be fair, modern calligraphers are still drawing ligatures and will continue ad infinitum.
 * Would it be practical to have two articles? (Orthographic ligature, Typographic ligature). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:54, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * On second thoughts, unless we have someone who knows about how these very decorative digital typefaces are constructed, I can't see that we would have enough material to justify a split. So I have stricken that idea. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:21, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Would Ligature (writing) do it for you then? The problem I have with the current title is that if I hear "orthographic ligature" what I take it to mean is a ligature that is orthographic, i.e. one that is distinct in a writing system, e.g. "œ" in French—as opposed to a ligature that is not, e.g. "&#xFB01;". If we really wanted to preserve WP:NATURALDAB, I guess we could choose "Ligature in orthography" or "Ligature in writing". Nardog (talk) 19:29, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
 * "Ligature (writing)" implies "hand writing" (usually but not necessarily), but the idea behind it is good. How about Ligature (lettering)? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:16, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
 * No, "writing" without qualification means writing, whatever the means. The very existence of the retronym "handwriting" is a testament to that. I've never heard of "lettering" in this context and I wouldn't know what it means. Nardog (talk) 21:20, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Used more in artistic or architectural context, so may be too marginal to use? See for example Eric Gill. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:06, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Support. Move to Typographic ligature per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRECISE. Vpab15 (talk) 18:19, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

"Ꜵ (former Unicode lowercase)" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Ꜵ (former Unicode lowercase). The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 October 8 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. -- Tamzin  [ cetacean needed ] (she/they) 06:05, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Ligature Icon Fonts
There are computer fonts that use ligatures to create icons. For example, typing "heart" with the Ligature Symbols font produces a heart icon. These help screen readers read out icons correctly (instead of speaking out a single letter for an icon as in Wingdings and similar fonts). The icons can be customized like text, instead of using an image editor.

Possible sources:

http://thenewcode.com/620/Why-You-Should-Consider-A-Ligature-Icon-Font-For-Your-Next-Project, https://developers.google.com/fonts/docs/material_icons, https://alistapart.com/article/the-era-of-symbol-fonts/ Wing Hong Chan (talk) 16:48, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

interrobang?
Would it be reasonable to say that the interrobang character is a ligature ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jawitkien (talk • contribs) 20:45, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't think so, it is more an overprint than a ligature. But if you can find a wp:RS that says so, problem solved. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:54, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Programming languages
I have removed this text from the article since the only source is the personal website of a single non-notable individual. That makes it wp:UNDUE and potentially a violation of WP:PROMO or WP:ADVOCACY: "Screenshot from 2020-01-23 17-18-18.png A more recent usage of ligatures is to style the appearance of computer source-code. To do this, a font is used which displays certain digraphs (two-character symbols) such as,,  , and   that are commonly used in programming and markup languages as ligatures. For example, the two-character sequence   would be displayed using a single ligature that resembles  , as the meaning of the   is “test for inequality” in those programming languages that use it. Fonts supporting such ligatures include Fira Code and Monoid."

If anybody believes it should be restored, they will need to provide WP:RS citations. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:10, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

For what language was the ꝏ created?
Currently Massachusett ꝏ reads:


 * [T]he double-o ligature "ꝏ" [represents] the "oo" of "f oo d" as opposed to the "oo"  of "h oo k" (although Eliot himself used "oo" and "ꝏ" interchangeably)

I think some clarification is needed here. The text sort of implies that $⟨ꝏ⟩$ was invented as a way to represent in Massachusett with $⟨oo⟩$ representing. The food and hook are just there as examples of the sounds for readers not familiar with the IPA. However this reading is false. Massachusett doesn't have the phoneme to contrast with. It doesn't even really have, it has the very similar which is the sound represented by $⟨ꝏ⟩$. So these can't be Massachusett phonemes that are being discussed.

When you look again with this in mind it seems that these are English phonemes. Many varieties of English have both and, and the examples are both English words. But why are we discussing $⟨ꝏ⟩$ and $⟨oo⟩$ to represent English sounds? Perhaps the intended implication is that $⟨ꝏ⟩$ was invented for English orthography to represent this distinction and $⟨ꝏ⟩$ ended up in Massachusett as a result. However this seems pretty inconsistent with the fact that Eliot used $⟨oo⟩$ and $⟨ꝏ⟩$ interchangeably.

Ignoring this text for a moment, if we look elsewhere and make some educated guesses it seems like $⟨oo⟩$ and $⟨ꝏ⟩$ were used interchangably in Massachusett orthography for based on $⟨oo⟩$ sometimes use in English as. The ligature was more useful because it makes more sense to write a single phoneme as a single letter and thus stuck around. If this is the explanation I think mention of should be struck from the text entirely. It should read something like:


 * [...] the use of the double-o ligature $⟨ꝏ⟩$ to represent based on the sometimes use of $⟨oo⟩$ in English to represent  (e.g. food).  Eliot himself used $⟨oo⟩$ and $⟨ꝏ⟩$ interchangeably.

With that in mind I've marked the text as requiring clarification, since I cannot make sense of what is being said. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 12:58, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I have no idea about IPA usage of ꝏ but I can point you to the Unicode proposal for the character: L2/06-027 Proposal to add medievalist characters at https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2006/06027-n3027-medieval.pdf See "Figure 28" and "Figure 87" for examples of usage.  Not sure if this helps. DRMcCreedy (talk) 15:00, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
 * The proposal discusses its use in Old Norse so not terribly relevant here however the usage of the character is pretty well covered by Massachusett orthography. The real issue here is a question of history.  Perhaps the claim should just be removed altogether with a focus on what can be supported via citation. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 21:54, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Use of bold to isolate glyphs
As it stands, the article makes extensive use of bold to "isolate" glyphs for analysis. The convention in linguistics is to use angle brackets for this purpose, thus (for example), $⟨a⟩$ rather than a (using template:angbr). Where needed, the template char is also available: although originally designed to isolate small marks like apostrophe, it has gained wider use when the formal markup is not appropriate or additional distinction needs to be made – thus, @. Use of 'bold' for this purpose is unconventional and contrary to MOS:BOLD. (The MOS advises editors to use italic markup when a use mention distinction is needed; when looking at characters as characters, this adds an additional and unnecessary complication that is best avoided.)

As may be seen from the history, I changed one section to use the "correct" markup but reverted when I saw how extensively the rest of the article is using bold. I would like to revise the markup in the article but thought it wise to seek consensus first. This is the effect: "The most common ligature is the ampersand &. This was originally a ligature of E and t, forming the Latin word "et", 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. 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, Trebuchet MS, and Civilité, known in modern times as the italic of Garamond)."

"The most common ligature is the ampersand &. This was originally a ligature of $⟨E⟩$ and $⟨t⟩$, forming the Latin word 'et', 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. 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, Trebuchet MS, and Civilité, known in modern times as the italic of Garamond)."

Comments? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:07, 30 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Hard cases make bad law but compare also the clarity of ₧ v. ₧. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:28, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Lack of logical connection in "Digraphs" section?
In the Digraphs section, Paragraph 2 doesn't seem to follow from Paragraph 1. Formatting is removed in the cut/paste below:

Digraphs, such as ll in Spanish 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 ch and ll were considered separate letters in Spanish for collation purposes. Catalan makes a difference between "Spanish ll" or palatalized l, written ll as in llei (law), and "French ll" or geminated l, written l·l as in col·lega (colleague).

The difference can be illustrated with the French digraph œu, which is composed of the ligature œ and the simplex letter u. Blamusico (talk) 01:07, 7 July 2023 (UTC)