Non-English Glyphs
Part 3 of 3

Last week I covered Ð, ð, Þ, and þ. This week I’m doing Ŋ, ŋ, Ɲ, ɲ, IJ, and ij.

These glyphs all have the j terminal, so it made sense to draw them at the same time.

Ŋ and ŋ

Eng (Ŋ, ŋ) is pretty simple. These glyphs are essentially the lowercase j descender attached to the bottom of the right vertical stroke of N and n for upper and lowercase respectively. I dived right into these without any problems.

Ɲ and ɲ

I approached hooked N (Ɲ, ɲ) the same as I approached Eng. They’re the same as Ŋ only the lowercase j descender is attached to the bottom of the left vertical stroke instead of the right. They’re actually kind of fun to draw.

IJ and ij ligatures

The Dutch treat ij as a singe letter—a dipthong with ligatured characters. While the ligature may not phisically connect the letters, it ensures that the two separate letter shapes are treated as a single glyph.

What I realized when I began drawing, however, is that I may have to wait to do these. I need to begin building the font in the computer and start spacing the font to get a sense of the text color. Once I have a good sense of color and spacing, I can work on putting together the I and J in a way that harmonizes visually with the rest of the typeface.

I also fooled around with a TT and tt ligature, but it poses the same cart-before-the-horse problem as the IJ.

Up Next: Diacritics!

I’m going to work on line spacing in order to get a sense of how much room the diacritics need, and then work on making marks.