Ligature (grammar)

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In grammar, a ligature is a morpheme that links two elements. [1]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ligature (writing)</span> Glyph combining two or more letterforms

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⟩ ; 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⟩ were combined.

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Many scripts in Unicode, such as Arabic, have special orthographic rules that require certain combinations of letterforms to be combined into special ligature forms. In English, the common ampersand (&) developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters e and t were combined. The rules governing ligature formation in Arabic can be quite complex, requiring special script-shaping technologies such as the Arabic Calligraphic Engine by Thomas Milo's DecoType.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Armenian alphabet</span> Alphabet used to write the Armenian language

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dagger alif</span> Form of the Arabic letter alif

The dagger alif or superscript alif is written as a short vertical stroke on top of an Arabic letter. It indicates a long sound where alif is normally not written, e.g. هَٰذَا hādhā or رَحْمَٰن raḥmān. The dagger alif occurs in only a few modern words, but these include some common ones; it is seldom written, however, even in fully vocalised texts, except in the Qur'an. As Wright notes "[alif] was at first more rarely marked than the other long vowels, and hence it happens that, at a later period, after the invention of the vowel-points, it was indicated in some very common words merely by a fatḥa [i.e. the dagger alif.]" Most keyboards do not have dagger alif. The word الله is usually produced automatically by entering "alif lām lām hāʾ", or in Arabic: "ا ل ل ه". The word consists of alif + ligature of doubled lām with a shadda and a dagger alif above lām.

Ligature may refer to:

References

  1. Inc, Scribendi (December 2, 2024). "Ligatures: A Guide to their Proper and Improper Use". www.scribendi.com. Retrieved 2024-12-02.{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)