Nonligature

Nonligature is a typography term referring to the absence of ligatures—glyphs that combine two or more letters into a single character. In nonligature text, consecutive letters are drawn as separate glyphs. Ligatures have historical origins in Latin script to address typesetting constraints and to improve visual harmony; in modern typography they are implemented as font features that can be enabled or disabled.

Control of ligatures occurs at both font and software levels. In OpenType fonts, ligatures are defined by features such as liga (standard ligatures), dlig (discretionary ligatures), and hlig (historic ligatures). Nonligature is achieved by disabling these features. In CSS, you can disable ligatures with font-variant-ligatures: none or with font-feature-settings: "liga" 0, among other controls.

Use of nonligature is common in certain contexts. In body text, many fonts balance readability with aesthetic ligatures, but in technical writing or programming, nonligature fonts are often preferred to ensure consistent character spacing and avoid any potential confusion. Some designers maintain optional ligature support in headings or display text for stylistic reasons.

Examples of ligatures frequently discussed in typography include fi, fl, ffi, and ffl. In addition, Unicode includes dedicated ligature code points—for example, U+FB01 for fi, U+FB02 for fl, U+FB03 for ffi, and U+FB04 for ffl—used in specific fonts or contexts, though most modern typesetting forms ligatures within the font rather than relying on precomposed characters. Nonligature, therefore, emphasizes separate letterforms rather than joined glyphs.