The globalisation of the type market and rising interest in multi-lingual typeface design is a source of great optimism among many typographers. Yet despite the proliferation of these beautiful new typefaces, many still do not support some European languages, let alone cater for African and Asian languages. In fact, contrary to the claims of advertisements, the offering is, in respect to language support, quite limited.

The aim of this article is to explain the fundamentals behind the use and design of Latin diacritical marks (accents) and help typographers make informed choices regarding their use. Design considerations are illustrated mostly with Central-European diacritics for the following reasons: a) they are generally less familiar to Western typographers. To quote Czech type designer Tomáš Brousil: “For Western typographers our accents are as strange as, for example, the Arabic script.” That they are seen as merely an add-on to the familiar Latin alphabet often leads to severely underestimating their importance; b) they are fairly familiar to the author; c) Central European, and the Czech language in particular, made one of the earliest uses of diacritics with Latin script (the substitution of diacritics for the use of digraphs was proposed by Jan Hus in his De Ortographia Bohemica in 1412).

For some time, floating or connected marks assigned to characters have been used in numerous writing systems, and have various purposes. Greek uses them to express tonality (so-called polytonic Greek), Arabic and Hebrew use them, optionally, to annotate vowels. In some of the Indian syllabic writing systems the marks represent alteration of the syllable sound (e.g. modifying the inherent vowel component).

In Latin, diacritics are usually a tool to extend the basic alphabet for use with a particular language. That is to add new compound characters (graphemes) to represent sounds (phonemes) common in that particular language, but not representable by the basic alphabet. Crudely put, the accents are used when the basic alphabet runs out of free slots, or when a systematic approach to marking is the aim (e.g. specific marks are used consistently to express softness, length, accent, &c.).

Diacritics are clearly not the only way to extend the writing system. New characters can be added (e.g. German ß) or clusters of letters (digraphs, trigraphs) can be used to represent specific sounds (as in Welsh, for example).

Nowadays, most of European languages make use of diacritics (for a nice overview see FontShop’s “Beyond ASCII” poster). Latin script was also extended for writing many African languages and Vietnamese. Various accents are used for transliteration of non-Latin scripts-languages to Latin (e.g. the pinyin system for Chinese). The International phonetic alphabet (IPA) is yet another extension of Latin.

Use of diacritics

It is often (but not always) the case that accented letters are equal citizens of vernacular alphabets. In Danish, for example, the alphabet goes “a–z, æ, ø, å”. The accented characters are compound, comprising character plus accent. Diacritical marks are therefore inherent parts of characters as much as stems or bowls. Even though accents are often detached from the basic letterforms, it does not mean they are any less important, or that they belong to punctuation.

The latter is a very common misconception and deserves some clarification. Punctuation is a tool to divide and structure sentences. Its style can differ (and it often does, in order to deliver the requisite distinction) from the stylistic principles of the letters. On the contrary, accents should form a harmonious whole with the letter-shapes they accompany, as they are intended to make consistent word-shapes to communicate meaning and/or word sounds.

This is nicely illustrated with the alternative caron. In Czech and Slovak, the caron has a special vertical form used on tall characters (ď, ť, ľ, Ľ). Its introduction was no doubt a solution to the limited vertical space available on the body of a piece of metal type. The regular caron (ě, š, č, ň, …) could not fit above the taller characters, therefore the vertical form was placed adjacent to the basic letter-shape. It is often mistakenly referred to as an “apostrophe-like accent”. But the alternative caron has nothing to do with the apostrophe! In fact, their similarity can be very confusing. The Czech word rozhoď (d with caron at the end) is the imperative form of “[do] scatter”. The word rozhod’ (apostrophe at the end), on the other hand, means “[he has] decided” in informal spelling commonly used in the literature. The possibility of text misinterpretation lead designers to come up with various ways of differentiating the caron from the apostrophe. The solution suggested by contemporary designers is based on a tight incorporation of the accents with the letters (see Peter Biľak’s Greta or some typefaces by František Štorm). The accent has a simple vertical wedge shape, whereas the apostrophe is larger and retains its typical comma-like form. Thus, the distinction between letters and punctuation remains clear.

There have been various issues with encoding non-Western characters since the early days of computers, and people became accustomed to writing emails and other ephemeral electronic communications without accents. This does not mean that the accents could be omitted in contemporary designs. They are still essential in transmitting meaning precisely, and in aiding readability.

Design of diacritics

The problem with diacritics is how to judge the quality of their design if one is not an experienced reader of a particular language (note that the expectations on the same diacritics may differ depending on the language or geographic area). Some of the biggest type foundries, to this day, employ the very same set of accents for many of the typefaces they produce. This dubious cookie-cutter approach makes for unreliable designs and generally makes things even more confusing. On the other hand, there exists a tradition of good accent design. Such accents have better readability and aesthetic value for the native reader. The following points together with further references should help designers to recognise satisfactory diacritic designs:

1. weight & size

As mentioned above, accents are word-builders. Therefore, they should not stand out from the texture by being either lighter or darker than the letters they accompany. Furthermore, letters with and without accents are semantically equally important, hence the importance of accents should not be undermined by their insufficient size. This becomes even more important at smaller sizes, e.g. around 10–12 points. Type designers tend to judge their accents at big sizes, only to discover (or not) that at text sizes, the accents are underdeveloped and illegible. The smaller the text the bigger and more articulated the accent should be in relation to the basic letter-shape.

2. placement

The position of the accent is crucial in order that the correct accent is attributed to the right letter while reading. Many of the accents are visually centred above or below letters. However, there are exceptions where the accent needs to be positioned to the right side of the letter (ogonek in letters -a,e,u- for example) or next to the letter (the aforementioned alternative caron). Proper positioning and proximity of the accents is crucial, but can prove difficult to achieve. The approach differs from display to text sizes and from regular to italic. And indeed, there are different approaches to positioning amongst designers. The general rule of thumb might be that the accents should not fall off the base letters — neither to the right nor to the left — when centred. Neither should they appear to belong to adjacent letters.

3. stylistic harmony

Weight and placement definitely have greater influence on readability than stylistic harmony. Nevertheless, stylistic harmonisation should never be underestimated. Particularly, when it comes to contrast distribution in the accents. Type designers often “overdo” the application of the “characters’ style” applying the very same contrast and stress axis to the diacritics. The diacritics are not small letters, hence the contrast in accents such as acute, grave or caron may be very dissimilar to the contrast within the base letterforms.

In order to achieve better legibility and articulated shapes, designers often use so-called symmetrical accents for their text typefaces (see figure below) thus achieving a very good compromise between stylistic unity and readability. The stress axis in these accents varies, for the main goal is to produce symmetrical shapes. The design and placement of asymmetrical accents have proven difficult to master. Such accents work well mostly in typefaces based on broad nibbed pen calligraphy (for a nice mid-way solution see one of the previous figures with Arno by Robert Slimbach; the capital accents are symmetrical — with breve being the odd one out — where the lowercase accents are more influenced by calligraphy).

It is recommended to reduce the contrast between thicks and thins as accents are proportionally smaller, and the thin parts tend to become fragile. Some other principles worth mentioning: the style of the simple endings should be the same as in the letter-shapes. More elaborate terminals (such as serifs, bulbous terminals, &c.) usually have no place in the accents. When the typeface employs open counters, the accents (cedilla, ogonek) should likewise have open counters (wide apertures). Of course, the stroke modulation should be as similar as possible.

As there is limited space above the capitals, special uppercase accents need to be used. These are smaller and shallower and better complement the capitals. Some designers also create special accents for use with small caps. This is especially advisable in cases where the style of caps (and small caps) and lowercase differ significantly; otherwise, lowercase accents can be applied without any problem.

Last, but not least, styling of the accents should not make them too similar to each other. Too shallow an acute may be mistaken for a macron; too rounded a caron mistaken for a breve. For the sake of legibility, the design of diacritics should not stray too far from their standard, accepted forms.

4. fitting/kerning

Diacritics should not collide and produce illegible shapes. For that reason, careful fitting and kerning is required. No type designer can foresee every possible diacritical combination, so typographers are strongly advised to apply their own judgement and taste.

Conclusion

The broad topic of diacritics is clearly beyond the scope of this general introduction, but it should be evident by now that diacritics are not merely an add-on to the basic letters. They make letters.

The views presented here focus primarily on text typefaces, where the demands, for obvious reasons, are higher. Careful research and sensitivity to their utility and aesthetic should help typographers to choose typefaces with well-designed diacritics (or at least recognise their shortcomings), thus improving the quality of many a vernacular text.

Further reading online

• Blažek F, Diacritics project, 2005.
• Briem GSE, Thorn and eth: how to get them right, 2001.
• Gaultney V, Problems of diacritic design for Latin script text faces, 2002.
• Paul C, Romanian diacritic marks, 2008.
• Twardoch A, Polish Diacritics: how to?, 1997-8.

About the author

• David Březina is a type designer and typographer with a computer science background. His interests lie in non-Latin type design and typography of multilingual and complex texts. He graduated with distinction from the MA in Typeface Design at the University of Reading (UK), and has since been working with Tiro Typeworks. He occasionally publishes in Typo magazine. David is currently fighting with the upright omega of his soon-to-be-released typeface Skolar.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

On diacritics

Five?

There are generally taken to be five vertical measures of note in type design (from bottom to top): descender, baseline, midline*, caps-height, and ascender.

But if you delve into the minutiae of font design, you soon discover that there are a slew of important vertical metrics that aren’t much talked about. In this article, I will take a look at several of these metrics, and how they are used in font design.

t-height

Take a look at the basic alphabet from the venerable Minion, with the top three measures highlighted across each glyph:

You’ll note that the lowercase ‘t’ sticks out like a proverbial sore thumb. The crossbar aligns with the font’s x-height, but the top of the glyph is on a vertical plane all its own. In my research, I find no accepted terminology to measure the top of the ‘t’, and so I propose we give a name to this vertical metric (simply enough): t-height.

The tradition for serif types is, like with Minion, for the crossbar of the ‘t’ to be at the font’s midline line, and for the top stem of the ‘t’ to come up somewhere midway between the midline and the caps-height.

Typically, sans serif faces adhere to the same rule, as do slab serifs. However, gothic and geometric sans faces often break with tradition and elevate the ‘t’ to the ascender. Handwriting fonts often do the same.

Overshoot

Looking at the string ‘xoXO’, you might think that there are only three of the standard five vertical metrics in play: baseline, midline, and caps-height.

But if you view these glyphs at a larger size, you can see that the bottoms and the tops of the ‘o’ and ‘O’ overhang the baseline and their respective constraining heights. This is standard practice in type design; the reason being that if the ‘o’ and ‘O’ came exactly to the baseline and x-height/caps-height, it would appear to the naked eye as if they were smaller than other surrounding glyphs. This goes for any glyph rounded on the top or bottom. Here are some typical lowercase overshoots, top and then bottom:

And typical uppercase overshoots:

In principle, the overshoots should not be apparent to the eye at normal text sizes. The whole idea of overshoots is that they make their glyphs appear to be the same height as flat-topped and flat-bottomed glyphs.

e-bar height

Typically, the bar of the ‘e’ rests somewhere between halfway and two-thirds up from the baseline to the midline. (It’s extremely rare to find a typeface where the bar of the ‘e’ is below the halfway point between the baseline and the x-height.) Let’s call the height of the center of the bar of the ‘e’ the e-bar height. Here are Minion, Helvetica, Times New Roman, and Museo, and how their e-bar heights compare to the A-bar height and the x-junction height:

A-bar height

The A-bar height, taken as the measure from the baseline to the center of the bar of the ‘A’, typically ranges from around 30-40% of the distance from the baseline to the caps-height.

Incidentally, as you can see from the above image, the H-bar height is generally higher than the A-bar height. This makes sense architecturally, if you think of the crossbars of these glyphs as providing a sort of balance. The ‘A’ crossbar, if it were up at the height of the ‘H’ crossbar, would make the ‘A’ rather top-heavy.

R-Junction, P-Junction, B-Junction, and K-Junction heights

When I first started designing fonts, I thought, naively, that the junction points in the middle of the vertical bars of the ‘R’, ‘P’, ‘B’, and ‘K’ were all at the same height. Wouldn’t it be easy if you could just design a ‘P’, and then just stick a leg on it for an ‘R’, and another hoop on it for a ‘B’? I soon learned better. Here, once again, is Minion to show us the subtle variations in vertical metrics that make a font interesting:

Upon closer inspection, we can really see the different heights of these junctions. Here’s a close-up of the ‘R’ next to the ‘P’. Note that the P-junction height is slightly lower than the R-junction height.

The B-junction height is much higher than the R-junction height:

E-Junction and F-Junction heights

You might also suspect that the middle bars of the ‘E’ and ‘F’ would be at the same height, but this is not always the case.

In Minion, the E-junction height is slightly higher than the F-junction height. You can see, also, that there is a wide variance of heights across the middles of some glyphs:

Look how strange Minion would look if all of these middle heights were the same:

And then some

We’ve really just scratched the surface. Well, I suppose we’ve dug in a little more deeply than the surface, but there are still a great many more interesting vertical metrics we could explore. G-bar height, briefly alluded to in the images above; foot serif height, and head serif height; two-storey a-junction height, or where the upper stroke of the bowl intersects with the vertical stem; two-storey g-bowl height, or how high the upper bowl of the ‘g’ starts above the baseline.

If your interest is piqued, I highly recommend Karen Cheng’s Designing Type, which is filled with wonderful analyses of minutiae like these.

* midline should not be confused with x-height; strictly speaking, the x-height is the distance between baseline and midline.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

Inconspicuous vertical metrics

僕がiLTを始めた理由のひとつは、話題としてあまり語られていないと感じたからなんだ。次にもっと重要なことだけど、タイポグラフィーのことを調べようと思っても、資料があまりなくてすぐ見つけるのが難しいといつも思っていたんだ。このブログの長期的な目的としては、タイポグラフィーのすべてが揃うワンストップショップになること。専門用語から新しいタイプフェイス、そしてひらめきのヒントになる様な書体例から、仕事に最適な字体選択まで提供できるんだ。WEBで使うものでもそうでないものもね。

じゃ、お遊びはこの辺にしてタイポグラフィーの専門用語を見てみることにしよう。それじゃあ、僕のヘタな語呂合わせでみんなが引いちゃう前に、何も怖がることなんてないんだってことを言わせて欲しい。でもなんでタイポグラフィーの専門用語に興味を持つべきなんだろう？僕が僕のディセンダーやスパインとアセンダーやセリフとを区別できないとしても本当に何か困ることがあるのかな？

じゃあ、何がわかるようになるかっていうと、ほんのちょっと専門用語について学べば、活字に対しての認識がすごく深まるってことなんだ。それから違う書体やフォントを見分けやすくもなるし、そうなると今度は君が使うフォントをより良く、賢く選択するのに役立つんだよ。

今日はセリフさんとお近づきになってみようね。（後にあるタイポグラフィーの専門用語の記事でセリフさんの仲間たちのことをもっと知ることができるよ）

一番よく知られている書体用語のひとつは“セリフ”。ジョン・ウェインが撃ち殺した、たくさんのシェリフ（保安官）と違うって事は簡単に分かるよね。僕の知る限りでは、彼はセリフを撃ったことは一度もない。セリフはしばしば小さい、だけど手強いんだ。

これを書く前に僕はこの話題についてほとんど知らない友人たちにタイポグラフィーの専門用語についていくつか質問を送ってみたんだ。ほとんどの人は「セリフって何？」って答えたよ、「文字の端っこについている丸い、小さい部分のことでしょ」みたいなこと言いながらね。そして、みんなそんなことタイポグラフィーの教科書で読んだことなんてなさそうなのに、ほぼ当たってるんだ。（セリフは）いつも丸いってわけじゃないけどね）

それじゃ、なんで「セリフ」って言葉なんだろう？そう、一般的に、この取るに足らないセリフの起源は古代ローマにたどることができると考えられているんだ。碑文を彫る前に、最初に石の上に文字を描いていた。文字を描こうとしたことがある人なら誰でも分かると思うけど筆で描くと最後の部分が少し太くなるよね。石碑彫りたちは当時、筆致の最後にふくらみをもたせて忠実に文字を彫っていたんだろう。こうしてセリフは生まれたんだ。

でも一方ではだれも「セリフ」という言葉についての語源はあんまり知らないようだね。セリフは、オランダ語の”書いた”を意味する言葉からきたという人もいるし、サンセリフという言葉の方が、セリフより起源が古いという人もいる。だからサンセリフはそれだけでセリフなし、ということを意味していたという人もいるんだ。（そういう風に書くと質問がくると思うけど、サンセリフの起源はどこからきているんだろう？）

おもしろいことに、中国語ではセリフは文字通り「足と供に造られている/成形されている」という風に訳されているんだ。だからもし誰かが君に「それに足をつけて！」と言えば、彼らは君にセリフフォントを要求してるってことがわかるだろうし、もし誰かが「彼には足がないわ！」って叫んだなら、彼らが見ているのはヘルベティカだと思うよ。

タイポウィキはセリフをこのように定義している：
セリフとは、文字の終端のふくらみである

そしてウィキペディアによると：
字や記号の端にある細部で、字の一部ではない部分

セリフには非常に多くの種類があるんだ。主な二つの書体はアドネイトとアブラプト。（さらに細かいたくさんのグループに分かれるんだけど、おいおい見てみよう）アドネイトセリフは、より自然だね。曲線を描きながら、どうやってセリフが太いたて字にくっついたのかがわかる。それからアブラプトセリフは名前から分かるように、角ばっていて、より堅いんだ。スラブセリフがアブラプトセリフのいい例だね。手を抜いたわけじゃないんだよ、ただ、角ばっているだけなんだ。

将来的には以下のような関連している話題にも注目していこうと思っているんだ：
セリフの流行と衰退；
セリフとサンセリフ－どちらを使う？
ウェブそして印刷物のためのすばらしいセリフタイプフェイス

それじゃ、今日はセリフのことはここまでにしておこうね。ほんとはもっとたくさん言えることがあるんだけど、君のスクロールバーを休ませてあげることにするよ。これから、より多くのタイポグラフィーの専門用語に注目していこう。ゆくゆくはこのシリーズは編集されて、PDFでダウンロードできる「e-type-book」として出版される予定なんだ。だからSSR登録して、引続き第２章を読んでほしいな。

勉強になったことはあったかな？

Part 2: The Return of the Serif.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

セリフを撃ったのは誰？

永远都在寻觅字体设计的 灵感。夏天过后，我买了一套便宜的书法钢笔，说服自己，它会让我的鸡爬字产生脱胎换骨的变化。在浪费了一个星期和几打白纸之后，我还是没得到什么有趣的或 是有稍微艺术气息的东西。最后，在一天晚上，疲倦而失望的我，在用完了黑色墨水之后，插入了一支红色的笔芯，然后写下了下面这一套字母表——之后它变成了 我的 Joules字族。我想，如果我在这个案例研究中把它如何变成字体的过程写出来，大家也许会感兴趣。

下面是那天晚上我写下的好多张草图之一：

特写：

超级特写：我迫不及待想使用的一个大写A。

从草图到字体

从草图创建Joules字体的过程，一如我之前的 两篇文章中所写的，我将草图扫描输入，下面是扫描稿在Photoshop里面转为黑白位图模式之后的样子

注意原稿位图中包含的粗糙杂点

通常，我会把这些位图处理干净之后才导入Fontlab，但这次例外。下面是第一个步骤，将位图导入ScanFont

在ScanFont中的一个特写：

我把这个新字符复制到FontLab中的正确位置。为了给你体验一下在FontLab中是如何进行调整的，下面放大显示了导入进来的粗糙的A。我选择了一个有问题的部分。

然后开始删去那些令人不快的节点：

在FontLab中调节字符的时候，我们必须在两种诱惑中做一个平衡：一方面要使得轮廓尽量的平滑，另一方面，又应该尽可能的留下一些粗糙的节点，以保留字体的趣味。我发觉，对书法字体而言，不应该平滑掉所有的粗糙节点，在某种程度上，那等于剥夺了它们书法的感觉。

救人危难的字符合成

FontLab的一个便捷之处，是它可以自动的合成字符。本例中我先创建了一个A，然后又建了一个“重音符”：

然后我双击这个“A-重音符”的小格…

…FontLab就创建了一个合成字符：

这时候，如果你编辑这个A或者那个重音符，变化会立即的自动更新到那个合成的“A重音符”上。

侧架

我前面几篇关于字体设计的文章中也提到了，设置合适的侧架是一个重要的步骤。（一个原因是，恰当的侧架会让字距调整变得简单！）先为字符做粗调，我粗略设置了一个很小的、正的侧架。在初始编辑时，这个y的侧架显示如下：

这样设置会有什么问题，在初始字距设置中看a和y的配对就能看出来了。

其实我可以保留这个y的侧架不变，然后在字距配对调整中，调节y靠近a，然后依此类推，在每一个字距配对中都调节y靠近其他的字符。但很明显，为这个y的左侧设置一个负的侧架的做法要更简单，也更明智：

下面就是改进后的留白设置在默认字距调整情况下的样子：

Kerning 字距调整

天，为这个字体设置字距花了我几个小时的时间！其中的烦人细节…我还是放过你好了。但这里还有另外一个字距调整的实例。在调整前是这样的：

调节调节后：

Ligatures 连字

下面举一个实例说说我是如何创建这些连字的。首先，我们先来看看这个z和a原始的连排效果。

下面举一个实例说说我是如何创建这些连字的。首先，我们先来看看这个z和a原始的连排效果。

其实我可以在字距配对的时候让它们以一种时髦的方式漂亮的重叠在一起，但更负责的做法还是做一个z-a的连字。第一步，创建一个空白字符，然后把z和a复制进来：

第二步，切开它们的轮廓，让它们能在合适的位置结合：

第三步，删除多余的部分：

第四步，移动字符让它们靠近

第五步，连接节点：

智能连字

Joules的第一个版本中并没有包含智能连字：这种技术是我最近才学会的。（这意味着TrueType字体的末日，因为智能连字技术必须在OpenType字体中才能实现。）其中的细节我就不唠叨了，但可以告诉你的是，需要在Fontlab中打开一个特殊的OpenType面板，并且通常还要写一些脚本，这样才能在一些能够识别连字的软件中激活你所创建的连字。大体上看起来是这个样子：

完成

这就是经过了无数次修整和字距调整之后的最终结果：

我后来又接着给它做了一个意大利体的版本（好吧，其实更象是一个斜体，你们这些吹毛求疵的家伙），然后是一个粗体、粗意大利体，然后是大黑体。如果还有人感兴趣，我可以继续说说其中的细节。

[Alec Julien>居住于美国佛蒙特州，是一个网络开发人员和业余字体设计师。他的梦想是有一天能搬到一个温暖的地方，为一部小说做排版。]

Translated by snlchina.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

打造你自己的字体（III）实例研究：Joules

If the ligature could speak, it might well ask, why does nobody love me? Well, let’s put the record straight, but before we do — just in case you’re wondering, what the hell’s a ligature, let’s take a brief look.

First, the typographic ligature should not be confused with the ligature of medicine; in medicine, a ligature is “a filament or thread used to tie something, like a blood vessel to prevent it from bleeding.” Interestingly. ligatures are also used in the treatment of Haemorrhoids. Confusing the two could result in serious injury or, at the very least mild discomfort. Who would have thought a health warning was necessary in an article on typography. OK, so now that that’s clear, let’s get a little more intimate with the ligature:

These are the most common ligatures, ff, fl, fi, ffi and ffl. A ligature is not simply two letters arbitrarily glued together. The two letters are crafted into a single letter (technically speaking a single glyph). Certain letter combinations are simply crying out for ligatures.

Let’s take, for example the combination of “f + i”: the letter “f” in both its lower-case and upper-case forms is top heavy; look at that overhang! In the example to your left, notice how the overhang of the “f” overlaps the “i” dot (tittle). Combining the “f” and “i” into a single glyph makes the “f” look that much more stable. It’s not going to fall over, because it’s using the “i” as a crutch. The overhang of the “f” (the terminal) also doubles as the dot of the “i”. You could say that ligatures are natural letter-friends.

With the invention of Metal Movable Type in the 15th century, ligatures flourished and were a great time saver when setting type. For example, instead of having to set an “f” and an “i”, a single ligature block could be used instead. That may not seem like a great time saver, but when you’re setting an entire book 0f 40,000 words in movable type, then it could certainly make a difference.

For those of you interested in the origin (etymology) of the word “ligature”, it comes from the Latin ligatus, which basically means to tie or bind. And when you look at the above examples, you can see that ligatures are letters that have been bound or tied together (how happy they are about that, I have no idea).

So, the next time you’re reading, be sure to look out for ligatures.

The Decline of the Ligature

So whatever happened to the ligature? Well, to cut a long story short, the modern-era of printing, the typewriter and Desk Top Publishing (DTP) were all nails in the ligature’s coffin. Richard Wendorf, in a 2005 lecture The Secret Life of Type, even suggests that the death of the ligature was brought about by a desire to reduce the number of type pieces, and was also influenced by the popular publisher John Bell (1745-1831), who abandoned ligatures; and is also said to be responsible for the death of the long S.

Interesting type fact!
The most common ligature is the “&” (ampersand). This was originally a combination of the letters “e” and “t”, et, the Latin for “and”. However, the ampersand is generally no longer considered to be a ligature — but that’s how it started out.

The examples we looked at above are some of the most common ligatures; however, it’s possible to make a ligature from just about any letter combination. In fact there are entire ligature typefaces out there. Here’s an example of Mrs Eaves Just Ligatures, designed by Zuzana Licko of the Emigre Foundry:

Well, I’m sure we could write a whole book on ligatures alone; however, something tells me that it might not be a best-seller. In future articles we might take a closer look at the ligature, its history, and how and when they should be employed; and, even their use on the Web.

And, if you think that no-one loves the ligature, then take any book or magazine out of your bookcase, open it up, and look for “fi”! Now what do you think of ligatures?

If you missed earlier articles in the Type Terminology series, you can catch up here:
Who Shot the Serif
The Return of the Serif

Coming soon:
More TypeNuts and Typoholism: Facing your addiction.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

Decline and fall of the ligature