Kerning

In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting letter spacing in a proportional font. Specifically, it implies that the two-dimensional blank spaces between each pair of letters all have similar area.

A very simple proportional font will simply specify the right and left sidebearings, or boundaries, of each letter. However, depending on the adjacent letter, the space may be reduced (and occasionally increased) to improve the appearance of the letters. For example, "A" and "V" can be placed closer together so that the top left of the "V" is directly above the bottom right of the "A".

Kerning is implicitly part of digital type design, and advanced typographic systems allow the specification of kerning. It is commonly confused with tracking, but these are two separate concepts.

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