Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
It's true that æ and œ are now unusual in English. But these are only ever displayed if they are entered as the ligature character. It's not correct for software to display every 'ae' as æ.
But the much more common ff, fl, fi, ffi and ffl should be displayed whenever they occur in text for good looking typography.
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I find æ more common than any other the et version of & is I think more common than any of the f*? I don't even remember seeing any f* ligatures, except in books or articles on ligatures or Calligraphy (which I used to do).
Separate letters should never be re-rendered as ligatures, except in handwriting. Or unless you are proof editing and æ or œ is actually more correct. The main reason for ligatures originally was manual script or representing non-Roman-Latin letters. Now the æ and œ can sometimes indicate a different spelling or pronunciation.
Typewriters (common by the end of the Victorian era, but not when Dickens started writing) killed ligatures, though the þ Þ had been replaced by yY or th Th in English when typesetting came in (15th C?). I'm not sure actual English used the ð Ð still in Icelandic, but earlier Anglo-Saxon may have.
The æ as originally different letter or pronunciation:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...ore-180961328/
So sometimes it represents the 'Ash' rune.
The œ as originally a different letter / pronunciation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%92
Sometimes a Scandinavian ø or ö is written as œ in English texts, which may be from a Rune. It's also sometimes representing a Greek letter.
The Scandinavian Runes mysteriously are later developments of the Latin Alphabet, whereas the proto-Celts / Early Celts (not Irish Celts) maybe 1000+ years earlier used an Etruscan derived alphabet with Greek letters and different sound values to some letters that look Latin. Maybe ALL alphabets /abjab except in South America and environs come from Aramaic or similar. Even ones in Asia.
I think most of the f* family of ligatures are from script handwriting.
I'd only use æ and œ in a few words that some people would recognise and never any other ligature. Ironically by the late 1980s when it became easy to do accented letters, ligatures and Icelandic letters that where common in ENGLISH texts either before 19th Century or the 15th Century, they had become obsolete. Same with the lovely traditional Irish lettering and alphabet that had even been on typewriters before WWII. The special a, d, g, s, r and dotted letters, also i with no dot, so it wouldn't be confused with í. The Irish alphabet, even had its own version of & (like a 7, but from 'agus', not ampersand which is really the Latin 'et', the '7' like symbol instead of & is still used on modern signs in Ireland). English school kids used to learn '&' as the last letter of the alphabet, it's a stylised version of the Et ligature.