# 19th Century Typography

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/19th-century-typography/458843>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 4, 2008, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/19th-century-typography/458843 "2008-08-04T20:58:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mks57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)\
**Post date:** [August 4, 2008, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/19th-century-typography/458843/1 "2008-08-04T20:58:20Z")

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While reading a 19th century English chemical journal, I noticed that every time the letters “ct” appeared, like in “constructed”, the two letters were joined at the top with a little arch. Does anyone know why they did this, and what, if anything, it means?

> **[Chemical News and Journal of Industrial Science](https://books.google.com/books?id=JZsEAAAAYAAJ)**

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**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\
**Post date:** [August 4, 2008, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/19th-century-typography/458843/2 "2008-08-04T21:03:34Z")

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[Ligature (writing) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographical_ligature) is a good place to start 🙂