This has to do with how the character り (and also さ and き) appears when written with a brush. The brush is sometimes not fully lifted off the page when writing, and this leaves a faint line connecting the strokes. This carried over to some text fonts. I’m having trouble finding pictures, but I remember seeing some in the past.
Exactly, computer fonts are always messed up. That’s why our teacher told us to be wary of computer fonts especially with kanji. What matters the most is the way you write it, may it be kanji or kana. Good thing would be to view the correct writing strokes and practice those.
Thanks for all your answers. It seems the り is a special case, as even Wikipedia (the most trustworthy of sources ) says that this specific hiragana can be drawn in one stroke
When I started to learn to write Japanese I was always dissatisfied with my りs because I was trying to copy the font that only has one stroke, and it never seemed to come out right. But then I looked at handwriting on YouTube and saw the version with two strokes and now I’m pretty proud of how my りs turn out.
I think someone just looked at their hiragana chart and assumed it was a single stroke just based on looks and doesn’t understand what はね is when it comes to Japanese writing.