Emma, currently on the first year graphics course at Staffordshire brought a recent print ad for the British Heart Foundation to our attention asking, "what's that squiggly bit?"
Well Emma, that 'squiggly bit' is the slightly less technical term for a ligature. So what's a ligature I hear you cry? Well, basically they are specially designed pairs and trios of characters which are linked together to form a unity. Ligature actually means 'laced together'. When certain combinations of characters appear, parts may invade the space occupied by the character it sits next to. Look at the image above, the 'fi' ligature is set in the fonts Caslon, Baskerville and Bodoni. Without the use of a ligature in this case the arm of the 'f' would clash with the dot on the 'i', consequently a specially designed ligature has been created to banish this unfortunate occurence and restore beauty to the happy marriage of the letters 'f' and 'i'.
Hopefully this will give you a very (and I mean very) basic introduction to ligatures.
Most of this was cribbed from the excellent book, 'About Face' by David Jury. Definitely worth purchasing where you can find out more about the weird and wonderful world of ligatures, leading and all things typographic.
