Kerning
reducing the horizontal space between several letters by optically equalizing it so that it appears uniform
In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the space between two specific characters, or letterforms, in a font. It is not to be confused with tracking, by which spacing is adjusted 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 related term kern denotes a part of a typed letter that overhangs the edge of the type block.
Metal typesetting
The source of the word kern is from the French word carne, meaning "projecting angle, quill of a pen". The French term originated from the Latin cardo, cardinis, meaning "hinge". In the days when all type was cast metal, the parts of a typecasting sort that needed to overlap adjacent letters 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 composition was called inter-spacing or letter spacing.
Because this method was not well-suited to some pairs of letters, ligatures were supplied for those glyph combinations, such as the French L’, or the combinations ff, fi, fl, ffi, ffl, and others.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Kerning” is reducing the horizontal space between several letters by optically equalizing it so that it appears uniform. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Kerning, reducing and horizontal, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1139211. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kerning” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.