page_title: IJ (digraph)
section_title: Print and handwriting
hierarchical_section_title: IJ (digraph) / Technical details / Print and handwriting
caption_attribution_description: English: Lijnbus ("line bus") road marking in Amsterdam
context_page_description: Ĳ is a digraph of the letters i and j. Occurring in the Dutch language, it is sometimes considered a ligature, or a letter in itself. In most fonts that have a separate character for ij, the two composing parts are not connected but are separate glyphs, which are sometimes slightly kerned.
  An ij in written Dutch usually represents the diphthong. In standard Dutch and most Dutch dialects, there are two possible spellings for the diphthong: ij and ei. That causes confusion for school children, who need to learn which words to write with ei and which with ij. To distinguish between the two, the ij is referred to as the lange ij, the ei as korte ei or simply E – I. In certain Dutch dialects and the Dutch Low Saxon dialects of Low German, a difference in the pronunciation of ei and ij is maintained. Whether it is pronounced identically to ei or not, the pronunciation of ij is often perceived as being difficult by people who do not have either sound in their native language.
  The ij originally represented a 'long i'. This can still be seen in the etymology of some words and in the Dutch form of several foreign placenames: Berlin and Paris are spelled Berlijn and Parijs.
context_section_description: In print, the letter ÿ (lowercase y with diaeresis) and ij look very different, but handwriting usually makes  ÿ, ij and Y, IJ look identical. However, since y occurs only in loanwords, the letter ÿ is extremely rare (if not altogether nonexistent) in Dutch.
  The long ij extends below the baseline and so is written with a long stroke. It is often written as a single sign, even in handwriting that does not join letters.
  On some road signs in the Netherlands, IJ appears as a single glyph formed like a U with a break in the left-hand stroke.
caption: Lijnbus (public bus, literally "line bus") road marking with IJ as a "broken U" glyph
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2014:05:24 13:13:26", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6053", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "461", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "345"}