A ligature is a typographic technique that combines two or more characters into a single glyph. In Latin typography, fi, fl, and ff are classic ligatures that prevent character collisions and create beautiful typesetting.

Programming fonts like Fira Code and JetBrains Mono feature coding ligatures that display != as ≠ and => as ⇒. Typography design books cover the history and use of ligatures.

CSS provides the font-variant-ligatures property to control ligatures. Use common-ligatures to enable standard ligatures and no-common-ligatures to disable them.

For character counting, ligatures appear as a single glyph visually but are internally treated as multiple characters. Font design introduction books explain the relationship between glyphs and ligatures.