Typographic ligature in the context of "ß"

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⭐ Core Definition: Typographic ligature

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⟩ (where the tittle on the ⟨i⟩ merges with the hood of the ⟨f⟩); 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⟩ (spelling et, Latin for 'and') were combined.

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👉 Typographic ligature in the context of ß

In German orthography, the letter ß, called Eszett (IPA: [ɛsˈtsɛt], S-Z) or scharfes S (IPA: [ˌʃaʁfəs ˈʔɛs], "sharp S"), represents the /s/ phoneme in Standard German when following long vowels and diphthongs. The letter-name Eszett combines the names of the letters of ⟨s⟩ (Es) and ⟨z⟩ (Zett) in German. The character's Unicode names in English are double s, sharp s and eszett. The Eszett letter is currently used only in German, and can be typographically replaced with the double-s digraph ⟨ss⟩ if the ß-character is unavailable. In the 20th century, the ß-character was replaced with ss in the spelling of Swiss Standard German (Switzerland and Liechtenstein), while remaining Standard German spelling in other varieties of the German language.

The letter originated as the sz digraph used in late medieval and early modern German orthography, represented as a ligature of ⟨ſ⟩ (long s) and ⟨ʒ⟩ (tailed z) in blackletter typefaces, yielding ⟨ſʒ⟩. This developed from an earlier usage of ⟨z⟩ in Old and Middle High German to represent a sibilant that did not sound the same as ⟨s⟩; when the difference between the two sounds was lost in the 13th century, the two symbols came to be combined as ⟨sz⟩ in some situations.

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Typographic ligature in the context of Cursive hieroglyphs

Cursive hieroglyphs, or hieroglyphic book hand, are a form of Egyptian hieroglyphs commonly used for handwritten religious documents, such as the Book of the Dead. This style of writing was typically written with ink and a reed brush on papyrus, wood, or leather. It was particularly common during the Ramesside Period, and many famous documents, such as the Papyrus of Ani, use it. It was also employed on wood for religious literature such as the Coffin Texts.

Cursive hieroglyphs should not be confused with the truly cursive form of hieroglyphs known as hieratic. Hieratic has many ligatures and signs unique to itself. However, there is a certain degree of influence from hieratic in the visual appearance of some signs. One significant difference is that the orientation of cursive hieroglyphs is not constant, reading right to left or left to right depending on the context, whereas hieratic is always read right to left. A right-to-left reading direction is also most common in the writing of cursive hieroglyphs, but they are usually arranged in columns rather than rows. The differences between cursive hieroglyphs and hieratic only became apparent after the end of the Old Kingdom, beginning with the First Intermediate Period. From this point, cursive hieroglyphs were mainly only used in sacralised contexts.

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Typographic ligature in the context of Ampersand

The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram &, representing the conjunction "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters of the word et (Latin for "and").

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Typographic ligature in the context of Logo

A logo (abbreviation of logotype; from Ancient Greek λόγος (lógos) 'word, speech' and τύπος (túpos) 'mark, imprint') is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name that it represents, as in a wordmark.

In the days of hot metal typesetting, a logotype was one word cast as a single piece of type (e.g. "The" in ATF Garamond), as opposed to a ligature, which is two or more letters joined, but not forming a word. By extension, the term was also used for a uniquely set and arranged typeface or colophon. At the level of mass communication and in common usage, a company's logo is today often synonymous with its trademark or brand.

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Typographic ligature in the context of Icelandic orthography

Icelandic orthography uses a Latin-script alphabet which has 32 letters. Compared with the 26 letters of the English alphabet, the Icelandic alphabet lacks C, Q, W, and Z, but additionally has Ð, Þ, Æ, and Ö. Six letters have forms with acute accents to produce Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú and Ý.

The letters eth (⟨ð⟩, capital ⟨Ð⟩), transliterated as ⟨d⟩, and thorn (⟨þ⟩, capital ⟨Þ⟩), transliterated as ⟨th⟩, are widely used in the Icelandic language. Eth is also used in Faroese and Elfdalian, while thorn was used in many historical languages such as Old English. The letters ⟨æ⟩ (capital ⟨Æ⟩) and ⟨ö⟩ (capital ⟨Ö⟩) are considered completely separate letters in Icelandic and are collated as such, even though they originated as a ligature and a diacritical version respectively.

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Typographic ligature in the context of Near-open front unrounded vowel

The near-open front unrounded vowel, or near-low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨æ⟩, a lowercase of the Æ ligature. Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as "ash".

The rounded counterpart of [æ], the near-open front rounded vowel (for which the IPA provides no separate symbol) has been reported to occur allophonically in Danish; see open front rounded vowel for more information.

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Typographic ligature in the context of Staurogram

The staurogram (), also monogrammatic cross or tau-rho, is a ligature composed of a superposition of the Greek letters tau (Τ) and rho (Ρ).

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Typographic ligature in the context of Yus

Little yus (Ѧ) and big yus (Ѫ), or jus, are two letters of the Cyrillic script representing two Common Slavonic nasal vowels in the early Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. Each can occur in iotated form (Ѩ, Ѭ), formed as ligatures with the decimal i (І). Other yus letters are closed little yus (Ꙙ), iotated closed little yus (Ꙝ) and blended yus (Ꙛ).

Phonetically, little yus represents a nasalized front vowel, possibly [ɛ̃] (like the French ‘in’ in “cinq” or Polish 'ę' in “kęs”), while big yus represents a nasalized back vowel, such as IPA [ɔ̃] (like the French ‘on’ in “bombon” or Polish 'ą' in “kąt”). This is also suggested by the appearance of each as a 'stacked' digraph of 'Am' and 'Om' respectively.

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Typographic ligature in the context of Stigma (letter)

Stigma (Ϛ ϛ) is a ligature of the Greek letters sigma (Σ) and tau (Τ), which was used in writing Greek between the Middle Ages and the 19th century. It is also used as a numeral symbol for the number 6. In this unrelated function, it is a continuation of the old letter digamma (originally Ϝ, cursive form ), which had served as a numeral since antiquity and was conflated with the σ-τ ligature in the minuscule handwriting of the Middle Ages.

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