Quote:
Originally Posted by delphidb96
The biggest problem with ligatures - in general - is that their use presumes: a) the reader's eyes are not SHOT! (Mine are and I have eyeglass prescriptions to prove it.) b) the lighting is suitable for their use. (Again, NOT a smart presumption for these tired eyes.) c) the device can handle large enough font size to compensate for the two former.
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I'm surprised to learn of your reaction. As should be clear from some of the intermediate posts, ligatures, and other more advanced typographical measures, are supposed to make text easier to read, not harder. There's a lot of reseach done to suggest that we don't process every letter in every word, and rely on cues from the overall word shape, and ligatures, from what I understand, are designed in part to keep that shape consistent and "flowing".
Ligatures are in almost all professionally typeset material, and have been for centuries; most people just don't notice them. If my eyes were bad, I'd expect that I probably would just not notice them either, not that they would bother me somehow.
Similarly, if my vision were bad, I doubt I'd notice the difference between straight and curly quotation marks, but I think I'd still subliminally get part of their intended positive effect of leading the eyes.
But obviously my speculation is worthless as anything more than that. I wonder if studies have been done on their effect, and certainly, what holds good in general might not hold good for everyone... and I certainly don't dispute that they cause you trouble.