No normal person would care, but Microsoft has finally added support for OpenType ligatures in Microsoft Word 2010 (Word 14). I’ve posted previously about indications that OpenType ligatures would be supported in Word 2010, but since the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview leaked, we know for sure.
OpenType ligatures aren’t enabled by default, though.
To enable OpenType ligatures, right-click on some text, select Font, select the Advanced tab, and select Standard Only from the Ligatures combo box. This enables the standard ligatures, like fi and ffi.
Depending on the font that you’re using, you can also select from a number of other sets of ligatures. And you can select from available stylistic sets and number forms, as well as change the number spacing.
You can also disable these OpenType features entirely by opening Word Options, selecting the Advanced tab, and checking Disable OpenType Font Formatting Features under the Layout Options that are right at the bottom.
This is all great news for the three people who were looking forward to this support in the next version of Word.
You can check out some more Office 2010 screenshots here and here.
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It does seem kind of sad if only three people care about decent typography. Or is it that all the people who care already have decent typography, and have for a very long time?
You should try it on Win7 with the Gabriola font.
@Richard Heck: It does seem that no one cares. It’s certainly convenient to have the support in Word finally, so that documents that you wouldn’t want to feed into another program (letters etc) can look a little better.
@Bob: The screenshot was taken using the Windows 7 RC. Gabriola, and other cursive OpenType fonts, finally work well in Word.
This… makes me cry with joy.
Try changing the Sytlistic effect to something like 7, using Gabriola. And then type something longish. It’s something to watch :)
@Bob: I hadn’t tried stylistic set 7 for Gabriola. It’s awesome.
@Richard
If you care, you’re probably already using TeX or LaTeX… furthermore you probably don’t give a stuff about Word because once you’ve learned TeX or LaTeX you’re much more productive anyway (and you can do it in vi or emacs depending on your religious persuasion). Of course, this might finally make documents look professional (though people will stuff it up with bad design choices).
Microsoft, why did this take so long? Oh and Apple’s Pages ‘09 already does this (I just checked).
@Jeremy: I can’t believe it took so long either. I always found it amusing that Notepad in Vista supported OpenType ligatures, but Word did not.
Yea, ditto Jeremy’s comment. Any respectable typographer won’t be using Word. LaTeX supports ligatures beautifully and if you’re not into that, there’s Adobe InDesign for professionals.
Oh and Apple’s Pages ‘09 already does this (I just checked).
Actually, it’s done by Mac OS X, so all apps have access to it. Even TextEdit (Wordpad’s equivalent) supports this
That’s great news (and long overdue) – I updated my TeX vs. Word comparison with this announcement, thanks for sharing this!
http://nitens.org/taraborelli/latex
@rohanl that’s correct, and not just for any Mac OS application but also for the GUI itself. Create a folder called “ffi” or “fl” and see how the name is rendered in the finder.
@Dario: I just tested that. I hadn’t noticed that about Mac OS X before. Neat.
Can Word 2010 also do true small caps and true superiors and inferiors?
@Miguel Sousa: No, Word 2010 doesn’t appear to support true small caps etc. If you select small caps in the Font dialog, Word 2010 just uses the shrunk down capitals formatting that Word has always used.
Pages 09’s OpenType support was almost unusable until 10.5.7 (May 2009). See this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9121017
This is great news. I don’t understand why can’t they implement proper small caps? Compared to math support in Office 2007 this should be an easy thing to do.
I was disappointed that small caps weren’t properly implemented too. Perhaps they’ll still implement them. This version of Office 2010 was only a technical preview.
Chris, I don’t know anything at all about ligatures. But I do know the difference between a “typeface” and a “font”, and I am interested in what you are saying. I notice you suggested going for STANDARD ONLY, and I’m wondering what the downside of this must be that (1) has Microsoft disable it by default, and (2) has you go for a cautious selection.
I mean, just suppose for a moment that there was a word-processing program that allowed a person to select ligature selections such as
None
Standard Only
Standard and Contexted
Historic and Discretionary
All
. . .and some kind of street-ruffian chanced upon that, and allowed his addictive-impulsive personality disorder to choose “All”. In what ways would that [further] ruin his life, and, as an older, wiser man, reminiscing on what he would do over again in another life, specifically why would he list it among his regrets? Would “All” have slowed his computer down, for example, or would it have turned all his writing into Ancient Greek, or would it have—well, WHAT would its downside have been?
I am sorry to bother you, but I have misplaced my LIGATURES FOR IMBECILES book. Thank you very much for your kind explanation. (By the way, I agree with those saying SpanDeX is best for professional writing. I always wear it myself. It lets me stretch for my coffee, and also, after too many hours of word-processing, the bright pink colour alerts me to what components belong to the computer and which are parts of my body.) Thanks again.
I didn’t put that much thought into it. Being a lawyer, it’s my nature to be overly cautious.
I’m going off the explanations of standard, discretionary, and contextual ligatures here. Depending on the font that you select, you may get ligatures that you don’t want if you select All.
Selecting Standard Only ensures that you get the, well, standard ligatures that you would probably want, without stuff that you don’t (especially historical alternates). Experiment if you like.
There is no performance difference, and I don’t know why Microsoft doesn’t enable the few typographical features that Word supports by default.
Thanks, Chris. XP never looked so good. Either I am getting to be very old (I am) or else MS has come up with a new best-ever here. I forget whether it was Word 4 or Word 5 which was the previous “best-ever”. It was a DOS version, anyway; no graphics and no shell of any consequence; typewriter typefaces. But it was a real joy to use. I began with Word 3.2.
I used to refer to “Word”, but now I’m calling it “Office”—just to see the ligature.
As for gentlemen in litagures using ligatures, well, I’m not sure if “litagures” exists as its own word at all, although “litigation” must come from a root. Well, I’ll let it pass. Thanks again.
Hey I was waiting for this feature for years! Neither OpenOffice.org nor Microsoft Office brought it until now…
I remember I’d gotten a survey after 2007 RTMed for what features I’d like to see and I gave them a good piece of my mind on how Apple’s Pages and Keynote trump Word and PowerPoint for typography and impressive special effects.
And put it here too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenType#Advanced_typography to embarrass them.
Finally we get it! And small caps still suck.
@Steve: Yep. How many years do we have to wait for small caps?
There’s a beautiful font, Gabriola, that has amazing flourishes that descend and ascend way beyond the norm…and in Publisher, they change as you type. Check out this Channel 9 video for more info…I’m not into typography, but found it interesting: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LarryLarsen/The-Importance-of-Gabriola/