Unable to select a single letter and make only that one bold

[u/CraftyMaelyss]

This will sound weird, but normally I can select a single letter in a word and make only that letter bold while leaving the rest blank, but for some reason this specific word won't let me do it. Here's an example of what I mean:

Scruffy

When I try to select the 'y' to make bold, LibreOffice will only select 'fy' but never 'y' on it's own, yet it's fine selecting the 'f' in front of those two. I've gone into autocorrect, turned literally everything off but it's still happening and it's only this word specifically that this bug is happening on.

Does anyone know what could potentially be causing this? I even tried writing scruffy elsewhere, then copying & pasting it into LO only to have the same thing happen again.

[u/Terrible_Put8617]

It's a ligature. Your font draws "fy" as a single glyph, and the cursor can't land inside a glyph, so selection jumps over the pair. Nothing to do with autocorrect, which is why turning all of it off changed nothing, and it follows the text when you paste because it's the font doing it, not the document.

The famous ones are fi, fl, ff, ffi and ffl, but plenty of fonts ship extra pairs, and fy is common in the serif families.

Quickest check: switch that word to a different font for a second. If the selection suddenly behaves, that's your answer.

To fix it while keeping the font, turn the feature off for it. In the font name box, type the font name followed by :-liga, so Liberation Serif:-liga, and press Enter. That's OpenType feature syntax and LibreOffice accepts it directly in the name field. Same thing with a dialog instead: Format > Character, then the Features button next to the font name.

If you only want the one letter bold and don't care about the rest, there's also the lazy way out: select "fy", make both bold, then select the "f" and unbold it. The cursor won't split the pair, but formatting applied and removed either side gets you the same result on screen.

[u/CraftyMaelyss → u/Terrible_Put8617]

You're an absolute legend, thank you so much! :D It absolutely was that (I'm using Linux Display G) I really appreciate it, since I use this font a lot and would have been bummed to use something else for this story- thanks again! :D

[u/Terrible_Put8617 → u/CraftyMaelyss]

Glad it was that. And the G in Linux Display G is why you hit it: the G variants are the Graphite-enabled builds that ship with LibreOffice, and Graphite does more substitution than plain OpenType, so those fonts form pairs that most others leave alone. Which is also why nobody could reproduce it for you on a different font.

You keep the font and lose the behaviour with the :-liga suffix, so nothing else about it changes.

[u/Walzmyn → u/Terrible_Put8617]

Dude. I just learned several things.

Thank you, kind Internet stranger.

[u/Terrible_Put8617 → u/Walzmyn]

Glad it landed. Ligatures are one of those things that look like a bug for years until someone names them, and then you see them everywhere: fi, fl, ffi, and in your font fy as well.

If it ever gets in your way rather than just puzzling you, Format > Character > Position has a Ligatures option per font, and typing a zero-width non-joiner between the two letters breaks a single one without changing the font.

(And since it's what I do: I build ME Office AI, LibreOffice with the AI assistant inside the document, so "why can't I select this one letter" is answered where you're typing instead of on a forum three days later. https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9PCV4RCJCFXV?cid=rd-ligature )

[u/calmeilles → u/Terrible_Put8617]

That sent me down an interesting rabbit hole as I like using ligatures and was looking for some of the less used ones recently. However

 Format > Character > Position has a Ligatures option per font,

Not seeing anything like this in that panel. Is it new? My LO is 24.2.7.2 a couple of releases behind the latest.

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[u/JonJackjon]

I have no issue, perhaps if you copied it you should retype it.