Modern English
Modern English (sometimes New English or NE as opposed to Middle English and Old English) is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, which began in the late 14th century and was completed in roughly 1550.
English alphabet
Outside of professional papers on specific subjects that traditionally use ligatures in loanwords, ligatures are seldom used in modern English.
The ligatures "æ" and "œ" were until the 19th century (slightly later in American English) used in formal writing for certain words of Greek or Latin origin, such as "encyclopædia" and "cœlom", although such ligatures were not used in either classical Latin or ancient Greek. These are now usually rendered as "ae" and "oe" in all types of writing, although in American English, a lone "e" has mostly supplanted both (for example, "encyclopedia" for "encyclopaedia", and "maneuver" for "manoeuvre").