AUTOMATICALLY PLACING F-LIGATURES IN TEXT
AUTOMATICALLY PLACING
F-LIGATURES IN TEXT
LIGATURES are
ties between letters. Certain fonts traditionally use ligatures for the letters
ff, fi, fl, ffi, and ffl. With ligatures, these become
the f-ligatures shown above. F-ligatures go back to the sixteenth
century, and look
elegant and natural in type to this day. Many of us learned to read with
primers using f-ligatures. They are commonly used in currently published books,
in a few magazines, but virtually never in newspapers nor in correspondence.
Adobe places the five f-ligatures in a number of its font families in its Expert collections. Adobe Garamond, for example, is a font package (Adobe #100) which can be supplemented by the Adobe Garamond Expert Collection (Adobe #101), containing the five traditional f-ligatures. These can be inserted in text by changing from the regular AGaramond font in the Standard Package to the AGaramondExp font in the Expert Collection each time a need for an f-ligature occurs, and then changing back to the regular font. This is cumbersome and slow, and it is easy to miss a ligature. The same problems occur when adding f-ligatures to completed text.
The following free download F-Ligatures Program for
Microsoft Word 97/2002 can, when installed, do this job automatically in
seconds, even in a lengthy document, creating all five f-ligatures by pressing
a Ligatures icon on the toolbar. It's so simple that any printed
document, any letter, even a newspaper, can contain these traditional
characters, carrying more style and readability to the printed word.
In order to re-edit
documents after f-ligatures have been placed in them, it is convenient to have
a way to undo them first. For this purpose pressing a second icon on the
toolbar, Undo Ligatures, will change
the f-ligatures back to their separate individual letter combinations. When
editing is finished the f-ligatures can quickly be replaced by again pressing
the Ligatures icon.
By
following instructions in the ReadMe file to install an included new Global
Template Ligatures.dot file for MS Word, the icons will automatically be
placed on the tool bar, and 10 macros will automatically be installed for
placing and undoing f-ligatures in five fonts. One of these macros is for
placing and another for undoing f-ligatures in the TrueType font Times New
Roman, the default font supplied with MS Word. A Times
New RomanExp font is supplied for this. Two additional TrueType fonts sets
are also included, Schoolbook and Garamand
Regular along with their respective font sets SchoolbookExp
and GaramandExp, and four more
macros. Four further macros are included for the Adobe PostScript fonts AGaramond
and ACaslon. To use these you must
first obtain from Adobe (www.adobe.com) and
install the two font sets AGaramond and AGaramondExp cited above,
and the two font sets ACaslon and ACaslonExp.
Click here to Download F-Ligatures
Program (241 KB)
Adobe
has a number of regular font sets available with corresponding expert font sets
containing f-ligatures. Macros for placing and undoing f-ligatures in other
Adobe fonts can be devised for MS Word 97/2002 using the following VisualBasic
patterns:
Macro
for Placing F-Ligatures in Text
(Sub
MAIN)
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find.Font
.SmallCaps = False
.AllCaps = False
.Name = "(Font Name)"
End With
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find.Replacement.Font
.SmallCaps = False
.AllCaps = False
.Name = "(Expert Font Name)"
End With
With Selection.Find
.Text = "ffi"
.Replacement.Text = "Y"
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
With Selection.Find
.Text = "ffl"
.Replacement.Text = "Z"
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
With Selection.Find
.Text = "ff"
.Replacement.Text = "V"
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = True
End
With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
With Selection.Find
.Text = "fi"
.Replacement.Text = "W"
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
With Selection.Find
.Text = "fl"
.Replacement.Text = "X"
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
(End
Sub)
Macro
for Undoing F-Ligatures
(Sub
MAIN)
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find.Font
.SmallCaps = False
.AllCaps = False
.Name = "(Expert Font Name)"
End With
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find.Replacement.Font
.Name = "(Font Name)"
End With
With Selection.Find
.Text = "Y"
.Replacement.Text = "ffi"
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
With Selection.Find
.Text = "Z"
.Replacement.Text = "ffl"
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
With Selection.Find
.Text = "V"
.Replacement.Text = "ff"
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
With Selection.Find
.Text = "W"
.Replacement.Text = "fi"
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
With Selection.Find
.Text = "X"
.Replacement.Text = "fl"
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
(End
Sub)