Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
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.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shalym
I guess I don't understand what a ligature is? Is it just squishing letters together?
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The f* ligatures are very common, and will be used in any printed book. And good rendering system for English text on a computer should also be using them.
A ligature is a glyph representing one or more characters. The & character is now a separate character in its own right. As are æ and œ in practice.
Some fonts also include ligatures for other character combinations, such at st, ft , ch, ck, ct, Qu and Th
The reason for these "stylistic ligatures" as wikipedia calls them is that the glyphs of the separate letter will overlap or be too close unless replaced by a special character.
