Greek words appear repeatedly in sixteenth-century Latin texts. Before analyzing their form and looking up their meaning in a dictionary, one must first read the words, which is not always easy. This is because printers in the sixteenth century often used not only standard Greek letters, but also ligatures, contractions, and abbreviations. That is, they joined letters together, shortened words, or used abbreviation markers. These ligatures, contractions, and abbreviations stem from the practice of copying manuscripts and made the scribes’ work easier. Since printers in the early days of book printing imitated medieval manuscripts, some of these features were preserved. If you regularly work with Greek texts that use more than the standard typeface you will quickly become accustomed to it. If you do not know about the details of Greek printed letters, you can look at reference materials:
- William Wallace, An Index of Greek Ligatures and Contractions (Journal of Hellenic Studies 43, 1923, 183–93)
- William H. Ingram, The Ligatures of Early Printed Greek (in: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 7, 1966, 371–89)