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Greek ligatures
Ligatures used in Greek writing / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Main article: History of the Greek alphabet
Greek ligatures are graphic combinations of the letters of the Greek alphabet that were used in medieval handwritten Greek and in early printing. Ligatures were used in the cursive writing style and very extensively in later minuscule writing. There were dozens[1][2] of conventional ligatures. Some of them stood for frequent letter combinations, some for inflectional endings of words, and some were abbreviations of entire words.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Greek_print_1566_Aristotle.png/320px-Greek_print_1566_Aristotle.png)
The sample shows the -os ligature in the middle of the second line (in the word μέθοδος), the kai ligature below it in the third line, and the -ou- ligature right below that in the fourth line, along many others.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Caslon_Greek_type_sample.jpeg/640px-Caslon_Greek_type_sample.jpeg)