Ligatures
lastmod 2024-08-07created 2024-08-074 edits
A ligature, in printed typography and handwriting, is the joining of two or more characters into a single letterform (the form of a glyph).
A ligature usually arises when two consecutive characters share a common part and are made into what looks like a single character. More generally, it refers to contextual forms: the general set of glyphs whose shape changes depending on contextual factors, such as the combination of characters surrounding a character or its nearness to the end of a line.
Ligatures began in traditional handwriting as a way to write characters quickly and efficiently, but in typography they have been widely used for aesthetic or readability reasons.
Ligatures have traditionally been used in various forms not only in the Latin script but also in the Arabic script, the Greek alphabet, Japanese kana, and others.
In coding
Includes multi-character ligatures (combinations of special symbols) to make combinations of symbols frequently used in code easier to read.
- A typical example is combining
!=into≠.
Supported fonts
Examples of fonts that support ligatures:
- JetBrains Mono (the suffix "NL" in "JetBrainsMonoNL" stands for "No Ligatures") - https://github.com/SimpsonGSD/JetBrainsMonoNL
- Fira Code
- Hasklig
- Cascadia Code