026: Thou shall use ligatures if your choice of typeface accommodates them correctly

Commentary To enhance your typographic skills and to improve your work, the employment of ligatures should be a consideration in your designs when setting large volumes of text. This is not law by any means, but an addition whereby the reader and your work benefit. Where characters share a common design feature, they can be replaced by a single character, a ligature. (For example, an “f” followed by an “i” is replaced by “fi.”) Ligatures enhance the reading experience by improving legibility and also help to make the typesetting more attractive. Not all typefaces possess ligatures but many serif families do. Some OpenType^® families may have additional, “discretionary” ligatures, which can include other character pairs, such as “ct,” “st,” and “cp.” When considering a typeface, check what is available within the character set and compare this against other families to determine which gives you the most options. PD