In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined as a single glyph. An example is the character æ as used in English, in which the letters a and e are joined. The common ampersand (&) developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters e and t (spelling et, from the Latin for "and") were combined.
In some typefaces, character combinations such as “fi” and “fl” overlap, resulting in an unsightly shape. The “fi” and “fl” ligatures were designed to improve the appearance of these characters.
The primary purpose of the ligature is to make text more readable by avoiding clashes between more than one character. The perceived fanciness is just an added bonus.
A ligature is a joining of two characters into one shape. For example, in French "œ" is a ligature of "oe".
References and Resources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_ligature
- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Ligature
- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-variant-ligatures
- https://glyphic.design/ligatures/?route=/2005/12/21/ligatures/
