Typographers are considering — hypothetically — the creation of new ligatures (joined type elements) to represent some L33Tspeak and chat abbreviations, such as “wtf” and “lol”.
Ligatures are letter forms that are joined for the purpose of making something that looks nicer. Look in a book or magazine and look at how “fl” and “ff” are joined. Similarly, diphthongs like “ae” and “oe” have ligatures set up for them, too. Most computer typefaces have such, but folks rarely actually make use of them except in extraordinary or typographically necessary situations (among other barriers, most spellcheckers don’t recognize them).
Technically, the ampersand — & — is also a ligature for “et”, the Latin for “and.”
Nobody’s actually considering creating such ligatures in fonts; it’s more of an “alternate universe” exercise, discussing how such typographical elements might have developed if the abbreviations become popular earlier in the language’s history. Fun.
(via BoingBoing)