What a join is

In connected handwriting, letters inside a word flow into each other — th, er, ing written as one moving shape, not two letters placed side by side. We call those pairs joins.

A font built letter-by-letter places each letter next to the last one. That's exactly right for printed handwriting. But if your hand naturally connects, letter-by-letter placement loses the flow — the t and the h sit politely apart where your pen would have swept from one into the other.

Joins fix that honestly: you write each pair once, in your own hand, and font files made with Pro use your joined shape wherever that pair appears in what you type.

Should you add them?

One test: write the word the on paper, the way you always do. Now look at it.

- Did your pen lift between the letters? You print. Skip joins — your font is complete without them, and nothing about it is lesser. - Did letters flow together without lifting? Your writing connects. Add the common joins and your font learns that flow.

Only add pairs your hand actually makes. A join you draw specially for the occasion won't look like your writing — because it isn't.

Touching, overlapping, or nearly so

A join doesn't need a tidy handshake. When you write a pair as one unit — the pen tying the letters together — it counts whether the strokes touch, overlap, or only nearly meet. A crossbar that swings over the next letter, a tail that cuts under one: those are joins too, and your font keeps exactly the relationship your hand makes. What doesn't count is two letters written separately that happen to sit close — that's spacing, and letter-by-letter placement already handles it.

The common joins

The standard group covers the pairs English writes most — **th, he, in, er, an, re, on, en, the double ll, the ending ing, and Th** for sentence starts. You can offer your font more pairs any time from the Letters room, and remove any that don't earn their keep.

Joins and plans

Writing join pairs is open to everyone, and everything you write stays yours. Font files made with Pro include your joins; a Free font file places letters one by one. See Free and Pro for the full picture.