Greek ligatures

Greek ligatures
Greek ligatures are graphic combinations of the letters of the Greek alphabet that were used in medieval handwritten Greek and in early printing. Ligatures were used in the cursive writing style and very extensively in later minuscule writing. There were many dozens[1][2] of conventional ligatures. Some of them stood for frequent letter combinations, some for inflectional endings of words, and some were abbreviations of entire words. In early printed Greek from around 1500, many ligatures fashioned after contemporary manuscript hands continued to be used. Important models for this early typesetting practice were the designs of Aldus Manutius in Venice, and those of Claude Garamond in Paris, who created the influential Grecs du roi typeface in 1541. However, the use of ligatures gradually declined during the 17th and 18th centuries and became mostly obsolete in modern typesetting. Among the ligatures that remained in use the longest are the ligature for , which resembles an o with an u on top, and the abbreviation for ('and'), which resembles a with a downward stroke on the right. The ligature is still occasionally used in decorative writing, while the abbreviation has some limited usage in functions similar to the Latin ampersand (&). Another ligature that was relatively frequent in early modern printing is a ligature of with (a small sigma inside an omicron) for a terminal .

Early Greek print, from a 1566 edition of Aristotle. The sample shows the -os ligature in the middle of the second line (in the word ), the kai ligature below it in the third line, and the -ou- ligature right below that in the fourth line, along many others.

18th-century typeface sample by William Caslon, showing a greatly reduced set of ligatures (-- in "", end of first line; -- in , middle of second line; and the abbreviation).

The ligature for , now called stigma, survived in a special role besides its use as a ligature proper. It took on the function of a number sign for "6", having been visually conflated with the cursive form of the ancient letter digamma, which had this numeral function.

Computer Encoding
In the modern computer encoding standard Unicode, the abbreviation has been encoded since version 3.0 of the standard (1999). An uppercase version was added in version 5.1 (2008). A lower and upper case "stigma", designed for its numeric use, is also encoded in Unicode. Letters derived from the ligature exist for use in Latin, and for Cyrillic, though not for Greek itself. Some attempts have been made at recreating typesetting with ligatures in modern computer fonts, either through Unicode-compliant OpenType glyph replacement,[3] or with simpler but non-standardized methods of glyph-by-glyph encoding.[4] Greek digraphs

Greek ligatures

Character Unicode name

GREEK CAPITAL KAI SYMBOL decimal 975 207 143 Ϗ hex U+03CF CF 8F Ϗ

GREEK KAI SYMBOL decimal 983 207 151 ϗ hex U+03D7 CF 97 ϗ

GREEK LETTER STIGMA decimal 986 207 154 Ϛ hex U+03DA CF 9A Ϛ

GREEK SMALL LETTER STIGMA decimal 987 207 155 ϛ hex U+03DB CF 9B ϛ

Encodings Unicode UTF-8 Numeric character reference

Latin and Cyrillic Ou digraphs

Character Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER OU decimal 546 200 162 Ȣ hex U+0222 C8 A2 Ȣ LATIN SMALL LETTER OU decimal 547 200 163 ȣ hex U+0223 C8 A3 ȣ CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER MONOGRAPH UK decimal 42570 234 153138 Ꙋ hex U+A64A EA 998A Ꙋ CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER MONOGRAPH UK decimal 42571 234 153139 ꙋ hex U+A64B EA 998B ꙋ

Encodings Unicode UTF-8 Numeric character reference

Example images

(-ei-) (-ger-) (kai) (-m-) (-os) (on)

(-st-) (phsi)

References
[1] [2] [3] [4] The Philokalia Package (http:/ / www. math. washington. edu/ tex-archive/ fonts/ philokalia/ philokalia. pdf), for LaTeX Carl Faulmann, Das Buch der Schrift: Schriftzeichen und Alphabete aller Zeiten und Vlker, Vienna 1880, p.172-176. e.g. ; e.g.

Article Sources and Contributors

Article Sources and Contributors

Greek ligatures Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=580947036 Contributors: AndrewHowse, Cevlakohn, Davidiad, Dawn Bard, Eddiemizzi, FilipeS, Future Perfect at Sunrise, Jasper Deng, Jesse V., Macrakis, Porges, Poulpy, RadarEclipse, Ross Burgess, Vanisaac, Xueexueg, 9 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors

Image:Greek print 1566 Aristotle.png Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Greek_print_1566_Aristotle.png License: Public Domain Contributors: cropped, photoshopped for readability and uploaded by User:Future Perfect at Sunrise Image:Caslon Greek type sample.jpeg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Caslon_Greek_type_sample.jpeg License: Public Domain Contributors: Future Perfect at Sunrise, Trelio, 1 anonymous edits Image:Greek ligature epsilon-iota-circumflex.png Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Greek_ligature_epsilon-iota-circumflex.png License: Public Domain Contributors: Future Perfect at Sunrise Image:Greek ligature gamma-epsilon-rho.png Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Greek_ligature_gamma-epsilon-rho.png License: Public Domain Contributors: Future Perfect at Sunrise Image:Greek ligature kai.png Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Greek_ligature_kai.png License: Public Domain Contributors: Future Perfect at Sunrise Image:Greek ligature mu-omega.png Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Greek_ligature_mu-omega.png License: Public Domain Contributors: Future Perfect at Sunrise Image:Greek ligature omikron-sigma.png Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Greek_ligature_omikron-sigma.png License: Public Domain Contributors: Future Perfect at Sunrise Image:Greek ligature oun.png Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Greek_ligature_oun.png License: Public Domain Contributors: Future Perfect at Sunrise Image:Greek ligature phesi.png Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Greek_ligature_phesi.png License: Public Domain Contributors: Future Perfect at Sunrise Image:estlig.PNG Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Estlig.PNG License: Public Domain Contributors: Cevlakohn, Future Perfect at Sunrise, Sfan00 IMG

License
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