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I know this is not constructive and I'm sorry, but I just can't read the text with those st and ct ligatures. It makes me feel like the author is trolling with

I know this is not constructive and I'm sorry, but I just can't read the text with those st and ct ligatures. It makes me feel like the author is trolling with them and I shouldn't take the text seriously. I know that's an exaggeration but that's what the design makes me feel.

rokkamokka 3y ago
It does really mess up the typography
muzani 3y ago
It's like that tiktok voice when used in technical demos. Just can't focus on anything else.
catach 3y ago
Luckily Reader Mode or disabling CSS takes care of the oddity.
- tzs 3y ago
  I wonder if that would ﬆill work if the ligature were done in Unicode instead of CSS?
  - catach 3y ago
    Interesting question! The st and ct ligatures used in the article don't seem to be part of the precomposed Latin ligature set, and what is there strikes me as far less obnoxious [1,2]. I expect it's possible to hack something together with combining characters, but also that the visual result would be far too ugly for the tastes of anyone who was desiring ligatures in the first place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_(writing)#Ligatures_in_Unicode_(Latin_alphabets) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_(writing)#Ligatures_i... [2] https://superuser.com/questions/669130/double-latin-letters-in-unicode-ligatures https://superuser.com/questions/669130/double-latin-letters-...
    - tzs 3y ago
      U+FB06 (LATIN SMALL LIGATURE ST) does display the same as the obnoxious ligature in the article if you have the right font. I actually used that for the "st" in the word "still" in my comment above. In the HN comment editor it is the same as in the article, with that stupid curve connecting the s and t. In the rendered comment in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari on my Mac it is using for regular comment text some font where the s and t are joined much less obtrusively. In fact at first I thought HN was replacing the U+FB06 on output with separate s and t. E.g., these two look very similar for me: ﬆill still. For rendered code blocks on Safari and Chrome it is using the font that has the curve. On Firefox it does not have the curves. Here is a code block example: ﬆill still
syslog 3y ago
At first I thought I had an unusual amount of very small hair on my display.
- gorlilla 3y ago
  Very small, curly hairs... hmm. (I might have thought the same thing while reading this on the toilet... so you can imagine the extra layer of credibility that afforded.)
j1elo 3y ago
But why to draw hairs between all 'ct' and 'st'? As a non-native speaker, is that some English weirdness that I have yet to learn about?
- colejohnson66 3y ago
  It's how English was written in the "olden times". At that time, little flairs (such as ligatures) were pretty common, and were very fanciful. Some simpler ligatures (like ff) survive today, but embellished ones (like ct) were toned down. It's just a stylistic choice to draw them one way or another, but it's jarring to see the fancier ones in "modern" texts because we're used to the simpler styles. Fun fact: The German "eszsett" (ß; U+00DF) is a ligature for "ss" (specifically the "long s"[0] and a normal "s") that evolved over time to be one "letter".[1] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sz_modern.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sz_modern.svg
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    To me it just feels out of place, like a calligraphy ligature got accidentally mixed with a standard serif font. From what I've seen this kind of ligature is usually applied to many other letter combinations as well, in which case it at least looks consistent.
  - JimDabell 3y ago
    The same goes for the ampersand – “et” slowly morphed into “&”.
  - drewcoo 3y ago
    > It's how English was written in the "olden times". Exactly. (skipping some minor details) When we started printing instead of writing, we dumbed the letterset down into fewer mechanical pieces. Thus earlier printers in English had to use the letter 'f' for the discarded "long 's'" letter, back when the long 's' was still expected by readers. And that dumbed-down letterset was the one that then made it to typewriters and then our keyboard today.
  - 3y ago
lol768 3y ago
I also found it distracting, which is a shame, because the actual core of the argument the author is making is an important one.
jccalhoun 3y ago
I couldn't read it because it was a tiny column of text at a tiny font size with the rest of the screen being wasted space. Thank goodness for reader view.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> I'm sorry, but I just can't read the text with those st and ct ligatures. The whole font is bad. It looks pixilated and blurry, which can only be explained by that being the intended look. It's bizarre.
- unconed 3y ago
  HN, where text looking bad on your machine means the designer intended for it to be unreadable. Isn't that more bizarre?
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  It doesn't look pixelated on my machine, it looks pretty nice - here's a screenshot at 200% zoom: https://i.imgur.com/WE1tbIB.png https://i.imgur.com/WE1tbIB.png The ligatures are definitely an unusual artistic choice...seems like the sort of thing you'd finally get used to 4 chapters into a book, but until you're immersed in it, it's quote distracting.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    The font looks much less ill-defined and irregular if I tell the browser to enlarge the text to 130%. There are still some issues at that size. But I'm not going to judge it by how it looks after I do a manual adjustment. The way it's presented is terrible. It somehow manages not to fit into the pixel grid of my 15-inch 3840x2160 screen. These are not large pixels!
qhwudbebd 3y ago
I assumed they were intentional for editorial effect: deliberately designed to disrupt the flow of a reader attempting to follow the text, in the same way that he claims the compression artefacts disrupt the perception of a skilled photographer trying to use the heavily compressed webp and jpeg images.
micheljansen 3y ago
Somehow these ligatures trigger subvocalization in my brain, with the silent "author's voice" speaking with a lisp. Probably not what was intended.
amne 3y ago
I wiped my phone screen a few times until I accepted it is part of the text. Is that a toggle in the text editor? And if it is then should reader clients have a counter toggle for it? I'm thinking autocrlf style.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
RheingoldRiver 3y ago
This site made me add my first-ever global Stylus sheet: * { font-variant-ligatures:unset!important; } I'm pretty infuriated that this is necessary, why would someone abuse readability so much for their own personal satisfaction about how "cool and unique" they are? Usability. Comes. First.
- jakubmazanec 3y ago
  I wouldn't turn off all ligatures, some of them are actually useful.
- arp242 3y ago
  It's their website. They can do with it whatever the hell they want with it. They owe random people on HN exactly nothing. And you can also do whatever the hell you want on your website, because that's your website. You also need to reset "font-feature-settings" by the way.
  - INGSOCIALITE 3y ago
    and he can globally remove whatever he wants from being displayed in his browser with global style overrides! what a glorious world we live in
    - arp242 3y ago
      They didn't just add a tip how to override it, they said this should not be done at all.
rob74 3y ago
Yeah, that got on my nerves too. Ligatures (like kerning) are supposed to help make reading more fluent and otherwise blend in, not stand out like a sore thumb. Really not sure what those ligatures are supposed to say - "wow, look how cool this font is, it has ligatures!!!"?!
jraph 3y ago
I was going to suggest blocking web fonts with uBlock Origin, but I get them even with JS and fonts blocked. Turns out a CSS rule does this: font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures discretionary-ligatures contextual historical-ligatures;
- capitainenemo 3y ago
  I didn't really understand what everyone was talking about since I use a combination of uMatrix and noscript and noscript blocks webfonts by default. But, after whitelisting his site, eh, it didn't bother me. I guess it's what one is used to.
account42 3y ago
Agreed, I don't understand why anyone would use ligatures like that on body text. Add them to titles you want to look particularly fancy if you must but please don't mess with the readability of anything longer than a paragraph.
qwertox 3y ago
I even went so far as to check the html code of the page to find out what was going on there. It is annoying, almost snobbish.
mort96 3y ago
I read this comment. I thought, "wow typical HN, someone has taken the time to write this big blog post and the top comment is about some stupid little typographic detail." Then I went to read the text and... :(
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

rokkamokka 3y ago

It does really mess up the typography

muzani 3y ago

It's like that tiktok voice when used in technical demos. Just can't focus on anything else.

catach 3y ago

Luckily Reader Mode or disabling CSS takes care of the oddity.

tzs 3y ago
I wonder if that would ﬆill work if the ligature were done in Unicode instead of CSS?
- catach 3y ago
  Interesting question! The st and ct ligatures used in the article don't seem to be part of the precomposed Latin ligature set, and what is there strikes me as far less obnoxious [1,2]. I expect it's possible to hack something together with combining characters, but also that the visual result would be far too ugly for the tastes of anyone who was desiring ligatures in the first place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_(writing)#Ligatures_in_Unicode_(Latin_alphabets) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_(writing)#Ligatures_i... [2] https://superuser.com/questions/669130/double-latin-letters-in-unicode-ligatures https://superuser.com/questions/669130/double-latin-letters-...
  - tzs 3y ago
    U+FB06 (LATIN SMALL LIGATURE ST) does display the same as the obnoxious ligature in the article if you have the right font. I actually used that for the "st" in the word "still" in my comment above. In the HN comment editor it is the same as in the article, with that stupid curve connecting the s and t. In the rendered comment in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari on my Mac it is using for regular comment text some font where the s and t are joined much less obtrusively. In fact at first I thought HN was replacing the U+FB06 on output with separate s and t. E.g., these two look very similar for me: ﬆill still. For rendered code blocks on Safari and Chrome it is using the font that has the curve. On Firefox it does not have the curves. Here is a code block example: ﬆill still

syslog 3y ago

At first I thought I had an unusual amount of very small hair on my display.

gorlilla 3y ago
Very small, curly hairs... hmm. (I might have thought the same thing while reading this on the toilet... so you can imagine the extra layer of credibility that afforded.)

j1elo 3y ago

But why to draw hairs between all 'ct' and 'st'? As a non-native speaker, is that some English weirdness that I have yet to learn about?

colejohnson66 3y ago
It's how English was written in the "olden times". At that time, little flairs (such as ligatures) were pretty common, and were very fanciful. Some simpler ligatures (like ff) survive today, but embellished ones (like ct) were toned down. It's just a stylistic choice to draw them one way or another, but it's jarring to see the fancier ones in "modern" texts because we're used to the simpler styles. Fun fact: The German "eszsett" (ß; U+00DF) is a ligature for "ss" (specifically the "long s"[0] and a normal "s") that evolved over time to be one "letter".[1] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sz_modern.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sz_modern.svg
- alpaca128 3y ago
  To me it just feels out of place, like a calligraphy ligature got accidentally mixed with a standard serif font. From what I've seen this kind of ligature is usually applied to many other letter combinations as well, in which case it at least looks consistent.
- JimDabell 3y ago
  The same goes for the ampersand – “et” slowly morphed into “&”.
- drewcoo 3y ago
  > It's how English was written in the "olden times". Exactly. (skipping some minor details) When we started printing instead of writing, we dumbed the letterset down into fewer mechanical pieces. Thus earlier printers in English had to use the letter 'f' for the discarded "long 's'" letter, back when the long 's' was still expected by readers. And that dumbed-down letterset was the one that then made it to typewriters and then our keyboard today.
- 3y ago

lol768 3y ago

I also found it distracting, which is a shame, because the actual core of the argument the author is making is an important one.

jccalhoun 3y ago

I couldn't read it because it was a tiny column of text at a tiny font size with the rest of the screen being wasted space. Thank goodness for reader view.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

thaumasiotes 3y ago

> I'm sorry, but I just can't read the text with those st and ct ligatures. The whole font is bad. It looks pixilated and blurry, which can only be explained by that being the intended look. It's bizarre.

unconed 3y ago
HN, where text looking bad on your machine means the designer intended for it to be unreadable. Isn't that more bizarre?
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
It doesn't look pixelated on my machine, it looks pretty nice - here's a screenshot at 200% zoom: https://i.imgur.com/WE1tbIB.png https://i.imgur.com/WE1tbIB.png The ligatures are definitely an unusual artistic choice...seems like the sort of thing you'd finally get used to 4 chapters into a book, but until you're immersed in it, it's quote distracting.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  The font looks much less ill-defined and irregular if I tell the browser to enlarge the text to 130%. There are still some issues at that size. But I'm not going to judge it by how it looks after I do a manual adjustment. The way it's presented is terrible. It somehow manages not to fit into the pixel grid of my 15-inch 3840x2160 screen. These are not large pixels!

qhwudbebd 3y ago

I assumed they were intentional for editorial effect: deliberately designed to disrupt the flow of a reader attempting to follow the text, in the same way that he claims the compression artefacts disrupt the perception of a skilled photographer trying to use the heavily compressed webp and jpeg images.

micheljansen 3y ago

Somehow these ligatures trigger subvocalization in my brain, with the silent "author's voice" speaking with a lisp. Probably not what was intended.

amne 3y ago

I wiped my phone screen a few times until I accepted it is part of the text. Is that a toggle in the text editor? And if it is then should reader clients have a counter toggle for it? I'm thinking autocrlf style.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

RheingoldRiver 3y ago

This site made me add my first-ever global Stylus sheet: * { font-variant-ligatures:unset!important; } I'm pretty infuriated that this is necessary, why would someone abuse readability so much for their own personal satisfaction about how "cool and unique" they are? Usability. Comes. First.

jakubmazanec 3y ago
I wouldn't turn off all ligatures, some of them are actually useful.
arp242 3y ago
It's their website. They can do with it whatever the hell they want with it. They owe random people on HN exactly nothing. And you can also do whatever the hell you want on your website, because that's your website. You also need to reset "font-feature-settings" by the way.
- INGSOCIALITE 3y ago
  and he can globally remove whatever he wants from being displayed in his browser with global style overrides! what a glorious world we live in
  - arp242 3y ago
    They didn't just add a tip how to override it, they said this should not be done at all.

rob74 3y ago

Yeah, that got on my nerves too. Ligatures (like kerning) are supposed to help make reading more fluent and otherwise blend in, not stand out like a sore thumb. Really not sure what those ligatures are supposed to say - "wow, look how cool this font is, it has ligatures!!!"?!

jraph 3y ago

I was going to suggest blocking web fonts with uBlock Origin, but I get them even with JS and fonts blocked. Turns out a CSS rule does this: font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures discretionary-ligatures contextual historical-ligatures;

capitainenemo 3y ago
I didn't really understand what everyone was talking about since I use a combination of uMatrix and noscript and noscript blocks webfonts by default. But, after whitelisting his site, eh, it didn't bother me. I guess it's what one is used to.

account42 3y ago

Agreed, I don't understand why anyone would use ligatures like that on body text. Add them to titles you want to look particularly fancy if you must but please don't mess with the readability of anything longer than a paragraph.

qwertox 3y ago

I even went so far as to check the html code of the page to find out what was going on there. It is annoying, almost snobbish.

mort96 3y ago

I read this comment. I thought, "wow typical HN, someone has taken the time to write this big blog post and the top comment is about some stupid little typographic detail." Then I went to read the text and... :(

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]