In type, a ligature is a special character that consists of two or more joined letters. The most common is “fi,” because the blob at the end of many lowercase “f’s” would crash into the dot on the “i.” Some software programs automatically turn ligatures on so that you don’t have to think about them: if a ligature is available in a certain font, it will be used instead of the font. Ligatures are not available in all fonts — some of them don’t need them.
While ligatures often improve the appearance of text, they can also introduce unexpected behavior when you start fine-tuning the space between letters.
To wit: Letterspacing looks elegant when done well (especially with capital letters. A well-set line of type in Trajan and some gray, maroon, and teal colors will bring you right back to 1992).
But when you letterspace lowercase type, the computer will read a ligature as one character and will not add letterspacing. The result will be something like this:
Even though letterspacing is less risky with capital letters, it’s not without its problems. The graphic design world lost its collective mind in 2025 when the much-loved Pope Francis was laid to rest beneath a stone with poor letterspacing. As Oliver Schöndorfer wrote, “That’s not a name, that’s a cry for help!”
Anyway… If you do letterspace lowercase type, make sure to turn off ligatures. Here’s how to do this in Microsoft Word. (Tested in Office 365 desktop version for the PC; terms may vary in other versions. Does not seem to be available in the web version of Word).
- Select your text and open the “Font” dialog.
- Go to the “Advanced” tab. (This is where you’ll also be able to choose letterspacing, either “Normal,” “Condensed,” or “Extended.”)
- Under “OpenType Features,” choose the appropriate item from the “Ligatures” menu. Choosing “Historical and Discretionary” will apply the most ligatures; make sure you choose “None” if you’ve got “Character spacing” set to “Extended.”
- Have some fun: Type some text in Times New Roman and follow the above instructions. You’ll see the type change back and forth and it will give you an instant understanding of why ligatures were designed in the first place.
Professional graphics programs like Adobe Creative Suite and Affinity allow you to turn ligatures on or off for selected blocks of text and even set preferences for an entire document. Instructions aren’t included here because this article is already long enough!
If you’re writing HTML a little-known CSS property called “font-variant-ligatures” comes to your rescue. Turn off ligatures with font-variant-ligatures: none and turn them on with font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures.