- The Ligature - What Sort Type Is This?
- "(The alphabet). We do not realize that each of these letters is at our service today only as the result of a long and laboriously slow process of evolution in the age-old art of writing."
- -Douglas C. McMurtrie
- The odd spaces and unusual characters in foundry type were called "sorts" and "pi" types. Some were attention-getters, like stars and bullets. Others were simply ornaments like flowers and borders. Around the edge of the job case were peculiar joined-letters: fi, fl, ff, ffi called ligatures. What was their origin and purpose?
- Machine-made products often emulate hand-made. Gutenberg called his invention "automatic writing". Every effort was made to copy the handwriting style of the monks and scribes. In fact, some of the early Bibles were almost passed off as hand-copied originals. Someone noticed a repeating flaw in one of the letters, and Gutenberg's business partner was almost brought up on charges of witchcraft.
- In the process of designing metal blocks of type, Gutenberg found certain letter pairs produced awkward letterspacing. He combined these combinations on one type body. The 42-line Bible was made from around 290 different characters. The special kerned and letterspacing, although beautiful, was soon neglected for reasons of cost.
- Generations later, faster press speed increased demand for faster typesetting. The first attempts were to bring back Gutenberg's ligatures and add some additional combinations. Commonly used letters were cast together on one body. After all, it was reasoned, a compositor picking two letters in combination was twice as fast as picking one although the case became much more complex and ponderous.
- Various systems were created that increased the compartments in a type case from a hundred or so combination letters to over 600 and even over 1,200. All of the extra letter combinations were made in an effort to speed up composition. Most of these ligatures were abandoned with the advent of automatic typesetting and the Linotype. A few kerned letters were saved for the pure beauty of the combination.
Copyright (C) 1997 by Frank Granger
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