Re: OT: YAGTT

Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Lars Mathiesen writes:
>> 2008/7/28 Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
>>
>>> Mark J. Reed writes:
>>>> Huh?  In a font with an fi ligature, every instance of f followed by i
>>>> is ligatured, regardless of morpheme boundaries.
>>  Not by German typesetting rules, that's the point.
>>  Umm, if the point is that the kern of the f will break off the type
>> if used before i, f, or t on a Linotype machine, wouldn't you have
>> to use a ligature regardless of the sensibilities of the German
>> spelling authorities?
>
> Well, I have no idea.
The rule comes from the old Fraktur typesetting. The top of a fraktur f
doesn't extend out far enough past the crossbar for a ligature to be
necessary. I don't know if the rule applies today (well, your examples
show it does as much as it can).

>> ... Or would German printers insert a thin space in such a situation
>> to keep the f out of harm's way?
>
> My wife just gave me a book that was printed with metal letters.  It
> has fi, ff, fl and ft ligatures.  Except for the f+i case, I found all
> in both the ligated and the separated form.  fi without a ligature
> seems to be really rare in German.  But from the others it indeed
> looks like a thin space.  See for yourself, I took some pictures:
>
>     http://www.theiling.de/ligaturen/
Nifty. I don't know that it's a thin space though, so much as just
putting the letters next to each other -- notice in particular that the
spacing of the serifs in "ffri" in "auffrischen" are quite regular.
(OTOH the spacing of "fiff" in "pfiff" is also quite regular; it might
be because the "r" overhangs ~the same about as the "f".) Notice also
that the top of the f does not extend out very far at all, so a ligature
is unnecessary and, therefore, every ligature that's added was done so
to clarify morpheme boundaries. (How's "bezweifle" divide up? is the -le
some sort of diminutive? or the equivalent of the -le/-er in English
words like chat/chatter, thumb/thimble.)

--
Tristan.

Reply