In writing and typography , a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph . Examples are the characters ⟨ æ ⟩ and ⟨ œ ⟩ used in English and French, in which the letters ⟨a⟩ and ⟨e⟩ are joined for the first ligature and the letters ⟨o⟩ and ⟨e⟩ are joined for the second ligature. For stylistic and legibility reasons, ⟨f⟩ and ⟨i⟩ are often merged to create ⟨fi⟩ (where the tittle on the ⟨i⟩ merges with the hood of the ⟨f⟩ ); the same is true of ⟨s⟩ and ⟨t⟩ to create ⟨st⟩ . The common ampersand , ⟨&⟩ , developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters ⟨e⟩ and ⟨t⟩ (spelling et , Latin for 'and') were combined.
91-401: Ludmila , Ludmilla , Liudmila , Liudmyla , Lyudmila , or Lyudmyla ( Cyrillic : Людмила, romanized : Lyudmila ) may refer to: Cyrillic script Co-official script in: The Cyrillic script ( / s ɪ ˈ r ɪ l ɪ k / sih- RIL -ik ), Slavonic script or simply Slavic script is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia . It
182-476: A full stop , comma , or hyphen are also used, as well as the equivalent set for the doubled ⟨ff⟩ . These arose because with the usual type sort for lowercase ⟨f⟩ , the end of its hood is on a kern , which would be damaged by collision with raised parts of the next letter. Ligatures crossing the morpheme boundary of a composite word are sometimes considered incorrect, especially in official German orthography as outlined in
273-515: A Greek zeta with a horizontal stroke , ⟨Ƶ⟩ , as an abbreviation for Zeus . Saturn's astronomical symbol ( ♄ ) has been traced back to the Greek Oxyrhynchus Papyri , where it can be seen to be a Greek kappa - rho with a horizontal stroke , as an abbreviation for Κρονος ( Cronus ), the Greek name for the planet. It later came to look like a lower-case Greek eta , with
364-478: A V, for aqua vitae ); 🝫 (MB, for balneum Mariae [Mary's bath], a double boiler ); 🝬 (VB, for balneum vaporis , a steam bath); and 🝛 ( aaa with overline , for amalgam ). 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
455-495: A capital version of the Eszett never came into common use, even though its creation has been discussed since the end of the 19th century. Therefore, the common replacement in uppercase typesetting was originally SZ ( Maße "measure" → MASZE , different from Masse "mass" → MASSE ) and later SS ( Maße → MASSE ). Until 2017, the SS replacement
546-646: A correctly spelled word, like IJs or ijs ( ice ). Ligatures are not limited to Latin script: Written Chinese has a long history of creating new characters by merging parts or wholes of other Chinese characters . However, a few of these combinations do not represent morphemes but retain the original multi-character (multiple morpheme) reading and are therefore not considered true characters themselves. In Chinese, these ligatures are called héwén ( 合文 ) or héshū ( 合書 ); see polysyllabic Chinese characters for more. One popular ligature used on chūntiē decorations used for Chinese Lunar New Year
637-440: A diacritic. Similarly, the word that was abbreviated to ⟨þ⟩ with a small ⟨t⟩ written as a diacritic. During the latter Middle English and Early Modern English periods, the thorn in its common script, or cursive , form came to resemble a ⟨y⟩ shape. With the arrival of movable type printing, the substitution of ⟨y⟩ for ⟨Þ⟩ became ubiquitous, leading to
728-475: A legitimate letter with its own position in the alphabet. Because of its relative youth compared to other letters of the alphabet, only a few European languages (English, Dutch, German, Polish, Welsh, Maltese, and Walloon) use the letter in native words. The character ⟨ Æ ⟩ (lower case ⟨æ⟩ ; in ancient times named æsc ) when used in Danish , Norwegian , Icelandic , or Old English
819-468: 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 typefaces, 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
910-474: A ligature (for "pesos", although there are other theories as well) but is now a logogram. At least once, the United States dollar used a symbol resembling an overlapping U-S ligature, with the right vertical bar of the U intersecting through the middle of the S ( US ) to resemble the modern dollar sign. The Spanish peseta was sometimes symbolized by a ligature ⟨₧⟩ (from Pts), and
1001-403: A particularly large set to allow designers to create dramatic display text with a feel of antiquity. A parallel use of ligatures is seen in the creation of script fonts that join letterforms to simulate handwriting effectively. This trend is caused in part by the increased support for other languages and alphabets in modern computing, many of which use ligatures somewhat extensively. This has caused
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#17330860425021092-535: A reversed ⟨t⟩ with ⟨h⟩ (neither the reversed t nor any of the consonant ligatures are in Unicode). Rarer ligatures also exist, including ⟨ꜳ⟩ ; ⟨ꜵ⟩ ; ⟨ꜷ⟩ ; ⟨ꜹ⟩ ; ⟨ꜻ⟩ (barred ⟨av⟩ ); ⟨ꜽ⟩ ; ⟨ꝏ⟩ , which is used in medieval Nordic languages for / oː / (a long close-mid back rounded vowel ), as well as in some orthographies of
1183-407: Is a combination of the four characters for zhāocái jìnbǎo ( 招財進寶 ), meaning "ushering in wealth and fortune" and used as a popular New Year's greeting. In 1924, Du Dingyou ( 杜定友 ; 1898–1967) created the ligature 圕 from two of the three characters 圖書館 ( túshūguǎn ), meaning "library". Although it does have an assigned pronunciation of tuān and appears in many dictionaries, it
1274-527: Is an extinct and disputed variant of the Cyrillic alphabet that originated in medieval period . Paleographers consider the earliest features of script had likely begun to appear between the 10th or 11th century, with the Humac tablet to be the first such document using this type of script and is believed to date from this period. Was weak used continuously until the 18th century, with sporadic usage even taking place in
1365-582: Is called kroužek . The tilde diacritic, used in Spanish as part of the letter ⟨ ñ ⟩ , representing the palatal nasal consonant, and in Portuguese for nasalization of a vowel, originated in ligatures where ⟨n⟩ followed the base letter: Espanna → España . Similarly, the circumflex in French spelling stems from the ligature of a silent ⟨s⟩ . The letter hwair (ƕ), used only in transliteration of
1456-596: Is derived from the Greek uncial script letters, augmented by ligatures and consonants from the older Glagolitic alphabet for sounds not found in Greek. Glagolitic and Cyrillic were formalized by the Byzantine Saints Cyril and Methodius and their Bulgarian disciples, such as Saints Naum , Clement , Angelar , and Sava . They spread and taught Christianity in the whole of Bulgaria. Paul Cubberley posits that although Cyril may have codified and expanded Glagolitic, it
1547-484: Is made by joining two or more characters in an atypical fashion by merging their parts, or by writing one above or inside the other. In printing, a ligature is a group of characters that is typeset as a unit, so the characters do not have to be joined. For example, in some cases the ⟨fi⟩ ligature prints the letters ⟨f⟩ and ⟨i⟩ with a greater separation than when they are typeset as separate letters. When printing with movable type
1638-456: Is no general consensus about its history. Its name Es-zett (meaning S-Z) suggests a connection of "long s and z" (ſʒ) but the Latin script also knows a ligature of "long s over round s" (ſs). The latter is used as the design principle for the character in most of today's typefaces. Since German was mostly set in blackletter typefaces until the 1940s, and those typefaces were rarely set in uppercase,
1729-422: Is not a typographic ligature. It is a distinct letter — a vowel — and when collated, may be given a different place in the alphabetical order than Ae . In modern English orthography , ⟨Æ⟩ is not considered an independent letter but a spelling variant, for example: " encyclopædia " versus "encyclopaedia" or "encyclopedia". In this use, ⟨Æ⟩ comes from Medieval Latin , where it
1820-748: Is still represented with a ligature: ɮ , and the extensions to the IPA contain three more: ʩ , ʪ and ʫ . The Initial Teaching Alphabet , a short-lived alphabet intended for young children, used a number of ligatures to represent long vowels: ⟨ꜷ⟩ , ⟨æ⟩ , ⟨œ⟩ , ⟨ᵫ⟩ , ⟨ꭡ⟩ , and ligatures for ⟨ee⟩ , ⟨ou⟩ and ⟨oi⟩ that are not encoded in Unicode. Ligatures for consonants also existed, including ligatures of ⟨ʃh⟩ , ⟨ʈh⟩ , ⟨wh⟩ , ⟨ʗh⟩ , ⟨ng⟩ and
1911-868: Is still seen today on icon artwork in Greek Orthodox churches, and sometimes in graffiti or other forms of informal or decorative writing. Gha ⟨ƣ⟩ , a rarely used letter based on Q and G, was misconstrued by the ISO to be an OI ligature because of its appearance, and is thus known (to the ISO and, in turn, Unicode ) as "Oi". Historically, it was used in many Latin-based orthographies of Turkic (e.g., Azerbaijani ) and other central Asian languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet formerly used ligatures to represent affricate consonants , of which six are encoded in Unicode: ʣ, ʤ, ʥ, ʦ, ʧ and ʨ . One fricative consonant
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#17330860425022002-522: 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
2093-621: Is the designated national script in various Slavic , Turkic , Mongolic , Uralic , Caucasian and Iranic -speaking countries in Southeastern Europe , Eastern Europe , the Caucasus , Central Asia , North Asia , and East Asia , and used by many other minority languages. As of 2019 , around 250 million people in Eurasia use Cyrillic as the official script for their national languages, with Russia accounting for about half of them. With
2184-514: Is the standard script for writing the following languages: Slavic languages : Non-Slavic languages of Russia : Non-Slavic languages in other countries : The Cyrillic script has also been used for languages of Alaska, Slavic Europe (except for Western Slavic and some Southern Slavic ), the Caucasus , the languages of Idel-Ural , Siberia , and the Russian Far East . The first alphabet derived from Cyrillic
2275-586: Is the tenth Cyrillic letter" typically refer to the order of the Church Slavonic alphabet; not every Cyrillic alphabet uses every letter available in the script. The Cyrillic script came to dominate Glagolitic in the 12th century. The literature produced in Old Church Slavonic soon spread north from Bulgaria and became the lingua franca of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Cyrillic in modern-day Bosnia,
2366-690: Is therefore not used in Turkish typography, and neither are other ligatures like that for ⟨fl⟩ , which would be rare anyway because of Turkish phonotactics. Remnants of the ligatures ⟨ſʒ⟩ / ⟨ſz⟩ ("sharp s", eszett ) and ⟨tʒ⟩ / ⟨tz⟩ ("sharp t", tezett ) from Fraktur , a family of German blackletter typefaces, originally mandatory in Fraktur but now employed only stylistically, can be seen to this day on street signs for city squares whose name contains Platz or ends in -platz . Instead,
2457-522: Is typically based on ⟨p⟩ from Latin typefaces, lowercase ⟨б⟩ , ⟨ђ⟩ and ⟨ћ⟩ are traditional handwritten forms), although a good-quality Cyrillic typeface will still include separate small-caps glyphs. Cyrillic typefaces, as well as Latin ones, have roman and italic forms (practically all popular modern computer fonts include parallel sets of Latin and Cyrillic letters, where many glyphs, uppercase as well as lowercase, are shared by both). However,
2548-697: The Duden . An English example of this would be ⟨ff⟩ in shelfful ; a German example would be Schifffahrt ("boat trip"). Some computer programs (such as TeX ) provide a setting to disable ligatures for German, while some users have also written macros to identify which ligatures to disable. Turkish distinguishes dotted and dotless "I" . In a ligature with f (in words such as [fırın] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |translation= ( help ) and [fikir] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |translation= ( help ) ), this contrast would be obscured. The ⟨fi⟩ ligature
2639-581: The faux row to ensure it can be rendered properly across all systems; in some cases, such as ж with k -like ascender, no such approximation exists. Computer fonts typically default to the Central/Eastern, Russian letterforms, and require the use of OpenType Layout (OTL) features to display the Western, Bulgarian or Southern, Serbian/Macedonian forms. Depending on the choices made by the (computer) font designer, they may either be automatically activated by
2730-721: The ⟨i⟩ in many typefaces collides with the hood of the ⟨f⟩ when placed beside each other in a word, and are combined into a single glyph with the tittle absorbed into the ⟨f⟩ . Other ligatures with the letter f include ⟨fj⟩ , ⟨fl⟩ (fl), ⟨ff⟩ (ff), ⟨ffi⟩ (ffi), and ⟨ffl⟩ (ffl). Ligatures for ⟨fa⟩ , ⟨fe⟩ , ⟨fo⟩ , ⟨fr⟩ , ⟨fs⟩ , ⟨ft⟩ , ⟨fb⟩ , ⟨fh⟩ , ⟨fu⟩ , ⟨fy⟩ , and for ⟨f⟩ followed by
2821-522: The Brahmic abugidas and the Germanic bind rune , figure prominently throughout ancient manuscripts. These new glyphs emerge alongside the proliferation of writing with a stylus, whether on paper or clay , and often for a practical reason: faster handwriting . Merchants especially needed a way to speed up the process of written communication and found that conjoining letters and abbreviating words for lay use
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2912-475: The French franc was often symbolized by the ligature ⟨₣⟩ (from Fr). In astronomy , the planetary symbol for Mercury ( ☿ ) may be a ligature of Mercury 's caduceus and a cross (which was added in the 16th century to Christianize the pagan symbol), though other sources disagree; the symbol for Venus ♀ may be a ligature of the Greek letters ⟨ϕ⟩ (phi) and ⟨κ⟩ (kappa). The symbol for Jupiter ( ♃ ) descends from
3003-558: The Glagolitic script . Among them were Clement of Ohrid , Naum of Preslav , Constantine of Preslav , Joan Ekzarh , Chernorizets Hrabar , Angelar , Sava and other scholars. The script is named in honor of Saint Cyril . Since the script was conceived and popularised by the followers of Cyril and Methodius in Bulgaria, rather than by Cyril and Methodius themselves, its name denotes homage rather than authorship. The Cyrillic script
3094-506: The Gothic language , resembles a ⟨hw⟩ ligature. It was introduced by philologists around 1900 to replace the digraph ⟨hv⟩ formerly used to express the phoneme in question, e.g. by Migne in the 1860s ( Patrologia Latina vol. 18). The Byzantines had a unique o-u ligature ⟨Ȣ⟩ that, while originally based on the Greek alphabet 's ο-υ, carried over into Latin alphabets as well. This ligature
3185-405: The Latin alphabet that originated in the seventh century, the phoneme it represents was formerly written in various ways. In Old English , the runic letter wynn ⟨Ƿ⟩ ) was used, but Norman influence forced wynn out of use. By the 14th century, the "new" letter ⟨W⟩ , originated as two ⟨ V ⟩ glyphs or ⟨ U ⟩ glyphs joined, developed into
3276-685: The Massachusett language to represent uː (a long close back rounded vowel ); ᵺ; ỻ, which was used in Medieval Welsh to represent ɬ (the voiceless lateral fricative ); ꜩ; ᴂ; ᴔ; and ꭣ have Unicode codepoints (in code block Latin Extended-E for characters used in German dialectology ( Teuthonista ), the Anthropos alphabet, Sakha and Americanist usage). The most common ligature in modern usage
3367-558: The Massachusett-language Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God , published in 1663) was the use of the double-o ligature ⟨ꝏ⟩ to represent the / u / of f oo d as opposed to the / ʊ / of h oo k (although Eliot himself used ⟨oo⟩ and ⟨ꝏ⟩ interchangeably). In the orthography in use since 2000 in the Wampanoag communities participating in
3458-622: The Netherlands , typically use a ligature resembling a ⟨U⟩ with a broken left-hand stroke. Adding to the confusion, Dutch handwriting can render ⟨y⟩ (which is not found in native Dutch words, but occurs in words borrowed from other languages) as a ⟨ij⟩ -glyph without the dots in its lowercase form and the ⟨IJ⟩ in its uppercase form looking virtually identical (only slightly bigger). When written as two separate letters, both should be capitalized – or both not – to form
3549-751: The Ravna Monastery and in the Varna Monastery . The new script became the basis of alphabets used in various languages in Orthodox Church -dominated Eastern Europe, both Slavic and non-Slavic languages (such as Romanian , until the 1860s). For centuries, Cyrillic was also used by Catholic and Muslim Slavs. Cyrillic and Glagolitic were used for the Church Slavonic language , especially the Old Church Slavonic variant. Hence expressions such as "И
3640-765: The accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union , following the Latin and Greek alphabets. The Early Cyrillic alphabet was developed during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire during the reign of Tsar Simeon I the Great , probably by the disciples of the two Byzantine brothers Cyril and Methodius , who had previously created
3731-486: The hashtag indicator. The at sign ⟨@⟩ is potentially a ligature, but there are many different theories about the origin. One theory says that the French word à (meaning at ), was simplified by scribes who, instead of lifting the pen to write the grave accent, drew an arc around the "a". Another states that it is short for the Latin word for "toward", " ad ", with the ⟨d⟩ being represented by
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3822-408: The local variant locl feature for text tagged with an appropriate language code , or the author needs to opt-in by activating a stylistic set ss## or character variant cv## feature. These solutions only enjoy partial support and may render with default glyphs in certain software configurations, and the reader may not see the same result as the author intended. Among others, Cyrillic
3913-456: The medieval stage to the late Baroque , without a Renaissance phase as in Western Europe . Late Medieval Cyrillic letters (categorized as vyaz' and still found on many icon inscriptions today) show a marked tendency to be very tall and narrow, with strokes often shared between adjacent letters. Peter the Great , Tsar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms ( ru ) in
4004-431: The question mark ) and the bang (printer's slang for exclamation mark ) into one symbol, used to denote a sentence which is both a question and is exclaimed. For example, the sentence "Are you really coming over to my house on Friday‽" shows that the speaker is surprised while asking their question. Alchemy used a set of mostly standardized symbols , many of which were ligatures: 🜇 (AR, for aqua regia ); 🜈 (S inside
4095-488: The umlauted vowels ⟨ ä ⟩ , ⟨ ö ⟩ , and ⟨ ü ⟩ historically arose from ⟨ae⟩ , ⟨oe⟩ , ⟨ue⟩ ligatures (strictly, from these vowels with a small letter ⟨e⟩ written as a diacritic , for example ⟨aͤ⟩ , ⟨oͤ⟩ , ⟨uͤ⟩ ). It is common practice to replace them with ⟨ae⟩ , ⟨oe⟩ , ⟨ue⟩ digraphs when
4186-492: The "sz" ligature has merged into a single character, the German ß – see below. Sometimes, ligatures for ⟨st⟩ (st), ⟨ſt⟩ (ſt), ⟨ch⟩ , ⟨ck⟩ , ⟨ct⟩ , ⟨Qu⟩ and ⟨Th⟩ are used (e.g. in the typeface Linux Libertine ). Besides conventional ligatures, in the metal type era some newspapers commissioned custom condensed single sorts for
4277-677: The 19th century). After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, some of the former republics officially shifted from Cyrillic to Latin. The transition is complete in most of Moldova (except the breakaway region of Transnistria , where Moldovan Cyrillic is official), Turkmenistan , and Azerbaijan . Uzbekistan still uses both systems, and Kazakhstan has officially begun a transition from Cyrillic to Latin (scheduled to be complete by 2025). The Russian government has mandated that Cyrillic must be used for all public communications in all federal subjects of Russia , to promote closer ties across
4368-514: The 20th century. With the orthographic reform of Saint Evtimiy of Tarnovo and other prominent representatives of the Tarnovo Literary School of the 14th and 15th centuries, such as Gregory Tsamblak and Constantine of Kostenets , the school influenced Russian, Serbian, Wallachian and Moldavian medieval culture. This is known in Russia as the second South-Slavic influence. In 1708–10,
4459-485: The 20th century. Sans serif typefaces, increasingly used for body text, generally avoid ligatures, though notable exceptions include Gill Sans and Futura . Inexpensive phototypesetting machines in the 1970s (which did not require journeyman knowledge or training to operate) also generally avoid them. A few, however, became characters in their own right, see below the sections about German ß , various Latin accented letters , & et al. The trend against digraph use
4550-539: The Cyrillic script used in Russia was heavily reformed by Peter the Great , who had recently returned from his Grand Embassy in Western Europe . The new letterforms, called the Civil script , became closer to those of the Latin alphabet; several archaic letters were abolished and several new letters were introduced designed by Peter himself. Letters became distinguished between upper and lower case. West European typography culture
4641-452: The French digraph œu , which is composed of the ligature œ and the simplex letter u . In Dutch , ⟨ ij ⟩ can be considered a digraph, a ligature, or a letter in itself, depending on the standard used. Its uppercase and lowercase forms are often available as a single glyph with a distinctive ligature in several professional typefaces (e.g. Zapfino ). Sans serif uppercase ⟨IJ⟩ glyphs, popular in
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#17330860425024732-460: The Greek uncial to the needs of Slavic, which is now known as the Cyrillic alphabet. A number of prominent Bulgarian writers and scholars worked at the school, including Naum of Preslav until 893; Constantine of Preslav ; Joan Ekzarh (also transcr. John the Exarch); and Chernorizets Hrabar , among others. The school was also a center of translation, mostly of Byzantine authors. The Cyrillic script
4823-568: The Serbian constitution; however, the law does not regulate scripts in standard language, or standard language itself by any means. In practice the scripts are equal, with Latin being used more often in a less official capacity. The Zhuang alphabet , used between the 1950s and 1980s in portions of the People's Republic of China, used a mixture of Latin, phonetic, numeral-based, and Cyrillic letters. The non-Latin letters, including Cyrillic, were removed from
4914-575: The Unicode definition of a character: this aspect is the responsibility of the typeface designer. The Unicode 5.1 standard, released on 4 April 2008, greatly improved computer support for the early Cyrillic and the modern Church Slavonic language. In Microsoft Windows, the Segoe UI user interface font is notable for having complete support for the archaic Cyrillic letters since Windows 8. Some currency signs have derived from Cyrillic letters: The development of Cyrillic letter forms passed directly from
5005-544: The Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project (WLRP), the ligature was replaced with the numeral ⟨8⟩ , partly because of its ease in typesetting and display as well as its similarity to the o-u ligature ⟨Ȣ⟩ used in Abenaki . For example, compare the colonial-era spelling seepꝏash with the modern WLRP spelling seep8ash . As the letter ⟨ W ⟩ is an addition to
5096-724: The alphabet in 1982 and replaced with Latin letters that closely resembled the letters they replaced. There are various systems for romanization of Cyrillic text, including transliteration to convey Cyrillic spelling in Latin letters, and transcription to convey pronunciation . Standard Cyrillic-to-Latin transliteration systems include: See also Romanization of Belarusian , Bulgarian , Kyrgyz , Russian , Macedonian and Ukrainian . Typographic ligature The earliest known script Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieratic both include many cases of character combinations that gradually evolve from ligatures into separately recognizable characters. Other notable ligatures, such as
5187-565: The arc. Another says it is short for an abbreviation of the term each at , with the ⟨e⟩ encasing the ⟨a⟩ . Around the 18th century, it started being used in commerce to indicate price per unit, as "15 units @ $ 1". After the popularization of Email , this fairly unpopular character became widely known, used to tag specific users. Lately, it has been used to de-gender nouns in Spanish with no agreed pronunciation. The dollar sign ⟨$ ⟩ possibly originated as
5278-609: 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
5369-458: The common " ye ", as in ' Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe'. One major reason for this was that ⟨y⟩ existed in the printer's types that William Caxton and his contemporaries imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, while ⟨Þ⟩ did not. The ring diacritic used in vowels such as ⟨ å ⟩ likewise originated as an ⟨o⟩ -ligature. Before
5460-724: The correspondence between uppercase and lowercase glyphs does not coincide in Latin and Cyrillic types: for example, italic Cyrillic ⟨ т ⟩ is the lowercase counterpart of ⟨ Т ⟩ not of ⟨ М ⟩ . Note: in some typefaces or styles, ⟨ д ⟩ , i.e. the lowercase italic Cyrillic ⟨д⟩ , may look like Latin ⟨ g ⟩ , and ⟨ т ⟩ , i.e. lowercase italic Cyrillic ⟨т⟩ , may look like small-capital italic ⟨T⟩ . In Standard Serbian, as well as in Macedonian, some italic and cursive letters are allowed to be different, to more closely resemble
5551-415: The cross added at the top in the 16th century to Christianize it. The dwarf planet Pluto is symbolized by a PL ligature, ♇ . A different PL ligature, ⅊ , represents the property line in surveying. In engineering diagrams, a CL ligature, ℄ , represents the center line of an object. The interrobang ⟨‽⟩ is an unconventional punctuation meant to combine the interrogation point (or
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#17330860425025642-552: The development of new digital typesetting techniques such as OpenType , and the incorporation of ligature support into the text display systems of macOS , Windows , and applications like Microsoft Office . An increasing modern trend is to use a "Th" ligature which reduces spacing between these letters to make it easier to read, a trait infrequent in metal type. Today, modern font programming divides ligatures into three groups, which can be activated separately: standard, contextual and historical. Standard ligatures are needed to allow
5733-438: The diacritics are unavailable, for example in electronic conversation. Phone books treat umlauted vowels as equivalent to the relevant digraph (so that a name Müller will appear at the same place as if it were spelled Mueller; German surnames have a strongly fixed orthography, either a name is spelled with ⟨ü⟩ or with ⟨ue⟩ ); however, the alphabetic order used in other books treats them as equivalent to
5824-418: The early 18th century. Over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the script. Thus, unlike the majority of modern Greek typefaces that retained their own set of design principles for lower-case letters (such as the placement of serifs , the shapes of stroke ends, and stroke-thickness rules, although Greek capital letters do use Latin design principles), modern Cyrillic types are much
5915-404: The facing edges of the bowls superimposed. In many script forms, characters such as ⟨h⟩ , ⟨m⟩ , and ⟨n⟩ had their vertical strokes superimposed. Scribes also used notational abbreviations to avoid having to write a whole character in one stroke. Manuscripts in the fourteenth century employed hundreds of such abbreviations. In handwriting , a ligature
6006-489: The features of national languages, and was subjected to academic reform and political decrees. A notable example of such linguistic reform can be attributed to Vuk Stefanović Karadžić , who updated the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet by removing certain graphemes no longer represented in the vernacular and introducing graphemes specific to Serbian (i.e. Љ Њ Ђ Ћ Џ Ј), distancing it from the Church Slavonic alphabet in use prior to
6097-428: The federation. This act was controversial for speakers of many Slavic languages; for others, such as Chechen and Ingush speakers, the law had political ramifications. For example, the separatist Chechen government mandated a Latin script which is still used by many Chechens. Standard Serbian uses both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts . Cyrillic is nominally the official script of Serbia's administration according to
6188-513: The first computer typesetting programs to take advantage of computer-driven typesetting (and later laser printers) was Donald Knuth 's TeX program. Now the standard method of mathematical typesetting, its default fonts are explicitly based on nineteenth-century styles. Many new fonts feature extensive ligature sets; these include FF Scala , Seria and others by Martin Majoor and Hoefler Text by Jonathan Hoefler . Mrs Eaves by Zuzana Licko contains
6279-411: The font to display without errors such as character collision. Designers sometimes find contextual and historic ligatures desirable for creating effects or to evoke an old-fashioned print look. Many ligatures combine ⟨f⟩ with the following letter. A particularly prominent example is ⟨fi⟩ (or ⟨fi⟩ , rendered with two normal letters). The tittle of
6370-516: The handwritten letters. The regular (upright) shapes are generally standardized in small caps form. Notes: Depending on fonts available, the Serbian row may appear identical to the Russian row. Unicode approximations are used in the faux row to ensure it can be rendered properly across all systems. In the Bulgarian alphabet , many lowercase letterforms may more closely resemble the cursive forms on
6461-552: The italic of Garamond ). Similarly, the number sign ⟨#⟩ originated as a stylized abbreviation of the Roman term libra pondo , written as ℔. Over time, the number sign was simplified to how it is seen today, with two horizontal strokes across two slash-like strokes. Now a logogram, the symbol is used mainly to denote (in the US) numbers, and weight in pounds. It has also been used popularly on push-button telephones and as
6552-408: The letters' Greek ancestors . Computer fonts for early Cyrillic alphabets are not routinely provided. Many of the letterforms differ from those of modern Cyrillic, varied a great deal between manuscripts , and changed over time. In accordance with Unicode policy, the standard does not include letterform variations or ligatures found in manuscript sources unless they can be shown to conform to
6643-458: The names of common long names that might appear in news headings, such as " Eisenhower ", " Chamberlain ", and others. In these cases the characters did not appear combined, just more tightly spaced than if printed conventionally. The German letter ⟨ß⟩ ( Eszett , also called the scharfes S , meaning sharp s ) is an official letter of the alphabet in Germany and Austria. There
6734-473: The native typeface terminology in most Slavic languages (for example, in Russian) does not use the words "roman" and "italic" in this sense. Instead, the nomenclature follows German naming patterns: Similarly to Latin typefaces, italic and cursive forms of many Cyrillic letters (typically lowercase; uppercase only for handwritten or stylish types) are very different from their upright roman types. In certain cases,
6825-503: The new upper case character for "ß" rather than replacing it with "SS" or "SZ" for geographical names. A new standardized German keyboard layout (DIN 2137-T2) has included the capital ß since 2012. The new character entered the official orthographic rules in June 2017. A prominent feature of the colonial orthography created by John Eliot (later used in the first Bible printed in the Americas,
6916-563: The number of traditional hand compositors and hot metal typesetting machine operators dropped because of the mass production of the IBM Selectric brand of electric typewriter in 1961. A designer active in the period commented: "some of the world's greatest typefaces were quickly becoming some of the world's worst fonts." Ligatures have grown in popularity in the 21st century because of an increasing interest in creating typesetting systems that evoke arcane designs and classical scripts. One of
7007-454: The one hand and Latin glyphs on the other hand, e.g. by having an ascender or descender or by using rounded arcs instead of sharp corners. Sometimes, uppercase letters may have a different shape as well, e.g. more triangular, Д and Л, like Greek delta Δ and lambda Λ. Notes: Depending on fonts available, the Bulgarian row may appear identical to the Russian row. Unicode approximations are used in
7098-569: The reform. Today, many languages in the Balkans , Eastern Europe, and northern Eurasia are written in Cyrillic alphabets. Cyrillic script spread throughout the East Slavic and some South Slavic territories, being adopted for writing local languages, such as Old East Slavic . Its adaptation to local languages produced a number of Cyrillic alphabets, discussed below. Capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts. Yeri ( Ы )
7189-636: The replacement of the older "aa" with "å" became a de facto practice, an "a" with another "a" on top (aͣ) could sometimes be used, for example in Johannes Bureus 's, Runa: ABC-Boken (1611). The ⟨uo⟩ ligature ů in particular saw use in Early Modern High German , but it merged in later Germanic languages with ⟨u⟩ (e.g. MHG fuosz , ENHG fuͦß , Modern German Fuß "foot"). It survives in Czech , where it
7280-576: The same as modern Latin types of the same typeface family. The development of some Cyrillic computer fonts from Latin ones has also contributed to a visual Latinization of Cyrillic type. Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letter forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography. Upright Cyrillic lowercase letters are essentially small capitals (with exceptions: Cyrillic ⟨а⟩ , ⟨е⟩ , ⟨і⟩ , ⟨ј⟩ , ⟨р⟩ , and ⟨у⟩ adopted Latin lowercase shapes, lowercase ⟨ф⟩
7371-469: The simple letters ⟨a⟩ , ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩ . The convention in Scandinavian languages and Finnish is different: there the umlaut vowels are treated as independent letters with positions at the end of the alphabet. In Middle English, the word the (written þe ) was frequently abbreviated as a ⟨þ⟩ ( thorn ) with a small ⟨e⟩ written as
7462-678: Was Abur , used for the Komi language . Other Cyrillic alphabets include the Molodtsov alphabet for the Komi language and various alphabets for Caucasian languages . A number of languages written in a Cyrillic alphabet have also been written in a Latin alphabet , such as Azerbaijani , Uzbek , Serbian , and Romanian (in the Moldavian SSR until 1989 and in the Danubian Principalities throughout
7553-562: Was also adopted. The pre-reform letterforms, called 'Полуустав', were notably retained in Church Slavonic and are sometimes used in Russian even today, especially if one wants to give a text a 'Slavic' or 'archaic' feel. The alphabet used for the modern Church Slavonic language in Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic rites still resembles early Cyrillic. However, over the course of the following millennium, Cyrillic adapted to changes in spoken language, developed regional variations to suit
7644-551: Was an optional ligature in some specific words that had been transliterated and borrowed from Ancient Greek, for example, "Æneas". It is still found as a variant in English and French words descended or borrowed from Medieval Latin, but the trend has recently been towards printing the ⟨A⟩ and ⟨E⟩ separately. Similarly, ⟨ Œ ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩ , while normally printed as ligatures in French, are replaced by component letters if technical restrictions require it. In German orthography ,
7735-648: Was created during the First Bulgarian Empire . Modern scholars believe that the Early Cyrillic alphabet was created at the Preslav Literary School , the most important early literary and cultural center of the First Bulgarian Empire and of all Slavs : Unlike the Churchmen in Ohrid, Preslav scholars were much more dependent upon Greek models and quickly abandoned the Glagolitic scripts in favor of an adaptation of
7826-464: Was further strengthened by the desktop publishing revolution. Early computer software in particular had no way to allow for ligature substitution (the automatic use of ligatures where appropriate), while most new digital typefaces did not include ligatures. As most of the early PC development was designed for the English language (which already treated ligatures as optional at best) dependence on ligatures did not carry over to digital. Ligature use fell as
7917-469: Was his students in the First Bulgarian Empire under Tsar Simeon the Great that developed Cyrillic from the Greek letters in the 890s as a more suitable script for church books. Cyrillic spread among other Slavic peoples, as well as among non-Slavic Romanians . The earliest datable Cyrillic inscriptions have been found in the area of Preslav , in the medieval city itself and at nearby Patleina Monastery , both in present-day Shumen Province , as well as in
8008-416: Was invented around 1450, typefaces included many ligatures and additional letters, as they were based on handwriting. Ligatures made printing with movable type easier because one sort would replace frequent combinations of letters and also allowed more complex and interesting character designs which would otherwise collide with one another. Because of their complexity, ligatures began to fall out of use in
8099-695: Was more convenient for record keeping and transaction than the bulky long forms. Around the 9th and 10th centuries, monasteries became a fountainhead for these type of script modifications. Medieval scribes who wrote in Latin increased their writing speed by combining characters and by introducing notational abbreviations . Others conjoined letters for aesthetic purposes. For example, in blackletter , letters with right-facing bowls ( ⟨b⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , and ⟨p⟩ ) and those with left-facing bowls ( ⟨c⟩ , ⟨e⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , ⟨d⟩ , ⟨ g ⟩ and ⟨q⟩ ) were written with
8190-562: Was originally a ligature of Yer and I ( Ъ + І = Ы ). Iotation was indicated by ligatures formed with the letter І: Ꙗ (not an ancestor of modern Ya, Я, which is derived from Ѧ ), Ѥ , Ю (ligature of І and ОУ ), Ѩ , Ѭ . Sometimes different letters were used interchangeably, for example И = І = Ї , as were typographical variants like О = Ѻ . There were also commonly used ligatures like ѠТ = Ѿ . The letters also had numeric values, based not on Cyrillic alphabetical order, but inherited from
8281-526: Was the only valid spelling according to the official orthography in Germany and Austria. In Switzerland, the ß is omitted altogether in favour of ss. The capital version (ẞ) of the Eszett character was occasionally used since 1905/06, has been part of Unicode since 2008, and has appeared in more and more typefaces. Since the end of 2010, the Ständiger Ausschuss für geographische Namen (StAGN) has suggested
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