Don't Forget the Ligatures!

This morning I was reading my current mystery book, David Handler's The Sour Cherry Surprise. I'm enjoying it. It's published by St. Martin's Minotaur (2008, 230 pages). Right now I need to have a brief word with the publisher.

Typeface ligatures were invented for a reason. You have them at your disposal–use them! This morning I noticed that, in the space of about twenty pages, Mr. Handler used the word "trafficker" three time and "scuffled" once. I, the reader, should not be noticing such things, I should be enthralled by the story I'm reading and too engaged to be counting vocabulary words.

The reason that I noticed, you will have guessed by now, is that your typesetter failed to use the familiar "ffi" and "ffl" ligatures. Consequently those words looked more like "traf ficked" and "scuf fled". It was irritating. It was distracting and so unnecessary.

Why, it was annoying enough to make a person write about it in his blog.

Posted on November 27, 2008 at 13.15 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Books, Feeling Peevish

2 Responses

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  1. Written by S.W. Anderson
    on Thursday, 27 November 2008 at 19.13
    Permalink

    It's rare, but I've seen a few examples that also. A close relative is the problem of text taken off the Web or from a PC text editor, where hyphenation breaks at the end of lines aren't properly closed.

    In the previous iteration of my blog, I adjusted type size down a bit and slightly tightened word, letter and line spacing. The result left a couple of things to be desired. As best I could tell, the ligatures you mentioned, as rendered by the two major Web browsers, failed to tighten proportionately with my adjustments. For that reason I've only reduced word spacing the slightest bit in the latest Oh!pinion design.

  2. Written by S.W. Anderson
    on Thursday, 27 November 2008 at 19.17
    Permalink

    Jeff, I hope you, Isaac, your family and friends have a great Thanksgiving.

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