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.

While writing a long and interesting paper on Australia’s Telecommunications Access Regime in Pt XIC of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth), I found that Microsoft Office Word 12 has half-baked support for OpenType ligatures:

The support is incomplete, however. OpenType ligatures appear only when running Word 12 on the Windows 7 Beta and when paragraph marks are enabled. Running on Vista or with paragraph marks disabled, the ligatures disappear:

The behaviour of the ligatures is also inconsistent. Create a new document and type ‘ffi’ and no ligatures appear. Type ‘test ffi’ and ligatures do appear. It’s clear from this buggy behaviour that the ligatures aren’t meant to appear at all, but they do provide evidence that Microsoft was working on implementing them.

Perhaps the feature was cut when Microsoft decided that Word 12 needs to run on both Windows XP and Vista after Vista was repeatedly delayed. It’s unbelievable that Notepad on Vista supports ligatures while Word still does not.

In any case, Microsoft has made further improvement to fonts in Windows 7, and the half-baked implementation of OpenType ligatures in Word 12 suggests that we may finally see support for them in Word 14.

Update: The Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview has leaked, revealing that OpenType ligatures are supported in Microsoft Word 2010 (Word 14).