kerning

In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual letterforms while tracking (letter-spacing) adjusts spacing uniformly over a range of characters. In a well-kerned font, the two-dimensional blank spaces between each pair of characters all have a visually similar area. The term "keming" is sometimes used informally to refer to poor kerning (the letters r and n placed too close together being easily mistaken for the letter m). The related term kern denotes a part of a type letter that overhangs the edge of the type block. Metal typesetting The source of the word kern is from the French word , meaning "projecting angle, quill of a pen". The French term originated from the Latin , , meaning "hinge". In the days when all type was cast metal, the parts of a typecasting sort that needed to overlap adjacent letters simply hung off the sort slug's edge. Those overhanging metal pieces were called kerns. At that time, the word kerning only referred to manufacturing the sorts with kerns, while adjusting space between letters during compositing was called inter-spacing or letter spacing.