Open any font’s kerning table and there’s a good chance “f” has more override pairs than almost any other letter. That crossbar sticking out to the right is gorgeous in isolation and a nightmare next to certain letters. This is the sixth entry in our glyph series, following “a” through “e.” Today, we’re breaking down the letter that gives type designers the most spacing headaches.

A Short History of “f”

“f” has a slightly unusual origin story compared to most of the alphabet. It traces back to the Phoenician letter waw, which represented a sound closer to “w” or “v” and is thought to have depicted a hook or peg. That single Phoenician letter actually ended up splitting into three separate letters as it moved through different alphabets: “f,” “u,” and “v” (and eventually “w” too) all descend from the same ancestral shape, which is why these letters still look vaguely related and historically got tangled up with each other well into the medieval period.

The Greeks adopted a version of the letter as digamma, used for a “w” sound, but it eventually fell out of standard Greek use. The Etruscans, however, kept a version of it alive and used it for an “f” sound, and the Romans borrowed that usage directly, which is how Latin ended up with “F” representing the sound it does today.

Roman capital “F” looked close to what we use now: a vertical stroke with two horizontal arms branching off to the right. Lowercase “f,” like most lowercase letters, didn’t fully form until scribes writing quickly by hand simplified the capital during the early medieval period. Interestingly, “f” is one of the few lowercase letters that kept a descender in some scripts — extending slightly below the baseline — a feature that has mostly disappeared from modern text fonts but still survives in some blackletter and calligraphic display typefaces.

Anatomy of a Lowercase “f”

Lowercase “f” is built around an ascender, the tall vertical stroke that rises above the x-height, topped with a hook or curved terminal, and a crossbar that cuts across the stem partway down, often extending out to the right past the stem itself.

That extending crossbar is the letter’s defining — and most problematic — feature. Because it sticks out past the vertical stroke, “f” can collide visually with whatever letter comes next, especially rounded letters like “i” or ascenders like “l.” This is why “fi” and “fl” are two of the most famous letter combinations in all of typography: they’re so prone to visual collision that type designers invented dedicated ligatures — single combined glyphs — specifically to solve the problem, merging “f” and the following letter into one smoothly connected shape.

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The top hook of “f” also varies quite a bit between typefaces. Some designs curve it into a tight, closed loop; others leave it open and straight, closer to a simple flag shape. This hook is one of the more expressive, personality-driven parts of the letter, since it doesn’t carry the same legibility constraints as the crossbar or stem.

“f” shares its ascender height with “b,” “d,” “h,” “k,” and “l,” so its vertical proportions need to match that whole family precisely, even though its top treatment and crossbar make it look quite different from any of them at a glance.

Designing the Letter From Scratch

Type designers typically draw “f” after the core ascending letters are settled, since its stem height and stroke weight need to match “b,” “h,” “k,” and “l” exactly. From there, most of the actual design work goes into the crossbar and the hook.

The crossbar’s length is the first major decision. A short crossbar that barely extends past the stem reduces collision risk with neighboring letters but can make “f” look cramped or unfinished. A longer crossbar looks more balanced and traditional but multiplies the kerning problems the designer will need to solve later. Most designers land somewhere in the middle, then build dedicated “fi” and “fl” ligatures specifically to handle the tightest collision cases, rather than trying to solve the problem with spacing adjustments alone.

The hook comes next, and this is where a lot of stylistic identity gets built in. A tighter, more closed hook feels more classical and serif-like; an open, flag-like hook feels more modern or geometric. Script and handwriting-style fonts often extend the hook into a flourish or connecting stroke, since “f” frequently needs to link smoothly into whatever letter follows it in cursive designs.

Once the shape is finalized, extensive kerning work follows — “f” typically needs specific spacing adjustments against nearly every lowercase letter with an ascender or a rounded top, since the extended crossbar creates more potential collision points than almost any other letter in the alphabet.

Unique Facts About “f”

“f” and “s” hold a strange historical relationship: in some 17th- and 18th-century typefaces, a “long s” (ſ) was used in place of a regular lowercase “s” in certain positions within a word, and it looked remarkably similar to “f,” minus the full crossbar. This is why old printed texts sometimes look, to modern readers, like they’re full of typos where “s” appears to have been swapped for “f.”

“f” is also the reason the “fi” and “fl” ligatures exist at all — before these were built into standard fonts, printers manually cast single pieces of metal type combining “f” with the following letter, specifically to prevent the crossbar from physically colliding with the dot of an “i” or the ascender of an “l” on the printing press.

Because of the ascender-plus-crossbar shape, “f” is disproportionately affected by hinting and rendering issues at small screen sizes, since the thin crossbar can disappear or blur at low resolutions if it isn’t reinforced carefully during font production.

“f” in Popular Fonts

In Garamond and other old-style serifs, “f” carries a pronounced descender in some versions and a calligraphic, gently curved hook that echoes broad-nib pen strokes. Helvetica keeps the hook tight and mechanical, with a crossbar cut cleanly and evenly, in line with its neutral, engineered character. Futura gives “f” a nearly straight, flag-like top with minimal curvature, matching its geometric, ruler-and-compass aesthetic.

In script and handwriting fonts, “f” is almost always drawn with an elaborate loop or flourish, since the letter’s natural crossbar and hook offer plenty of room for a connecting stroke, making it one of the more decorative letters in cursive-style typefaces.

Summary

Lowercase “f” is a letter defined by tension — between a hook that carries most of its stylistic personality and a crossbar that causes more spacing problems than almost any other letter in the alphabet. Its tangled family history with “u,” “v,” and “w,” its long-running rivalry with the historic “long s,” and its starring role in the invention of the “fi” and “fl” ligatures make it one of the more quietly dramatic letters in all of typography.

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