A ligature is a special character that combines two (or sometimes three) characters into a single character. A standard ligature is functional in nature, and is created to solve the problem of characters that crash when set next to each other.
The most common standard ligatures are the “f”-ligatures: “fi,” “fl” and sometimes “ff,” “ffi,” “ffl,” and occasionally more. These are created to prevent the unattractive collision that occurs in some typefaces between the hook and/or crossbar of the “f” and the dot or serif of the “i,” or the ascender of the “l” or second “f.”
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| You can easily view a font’s available standard ligatures via the Glyph palette. Use the drop-down menu to isolate them from the entire character complement, as shown in InDesign. Click to select them individually. |
Although the “fi” and “fl” ligatures are standard in Type 1 and TrueType fonts, a broader range of standard ligatures are found in many of the new OpenType fonts. They can be accessed in either of two ways:
- Individually, by clicking them in the Glyph palette. It’s easier if you access all the standard ligatures from the drop-down menu in the Glyph palette.
- Turning them on and off globally. This can be done in Adobe® InDesign®, by accessing the drop-down panel in the Character palette, or in QuarkXPress®, by choosing Style > Character > OpenType. You can also access them with style sheets. Note that standard ligatures are turned on by default in most design programs.
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| Ligatures, as well as other attributes, can be turned on and off globally in QuarkXPress via the Character Attributes menu by choosing Style > Character. |
Ligatures should be used with extreme care (or avoided entirely) if you plan to adjust the overall letterspacing of the text containing these combinations. Since a ligature is a single character, its internal spacing won’t change when you tighten or open up the letterspacing. In fact, when using extreme tracking, most design apps will replace ligatures at a certain tracking threshold with the original single characters to maintain consistent spacing.
(See Part II of this article, on Discretionary Ligatures)