Ligatured

Ligatured refers to text in which two or more characters are joined to form a single glyph. This is common in typography and handwriting, where ligatures are used to improve readability and aesthetics or to conserve space. In modern typesetting, ligatured text is produced by font glyphs and by substitution features in digital fonts. OpenType fonts support ligatures through features such as liga (standard ligatures) and dlig ( discretionary ligatures), allowing software to replace sequences like fi or fl with their corresponding ligature glyphs.

Common Latin ligatures include fi, fl, ffi, and ffl. Historical and typographic ligatures include æ, œ (as single units in some fonts), and long s with t (ſt). Some ligatures are encoded as separate Unicode code points, notably the "compatibility ligatures" in the range U+FB00 to U+FB06, as well as the digraphs æ (U+00E6) and œ (U+0153). In practice, support for ligatures varies by font and application; they can be enabled or disabled, and kerning may be adjusted when ligatures are used.

In digital media, ligatured text appears in books, magazines, and websites that use high-quality typography. In some contexts, such as programming interfaces or certain design styles, ligatures may be avoided to preserve monospaced or neutral appearance. Additionally, optical character recognition and transcription of historical texts often pay special attention to ligatured forms.