What Is Kerning?

This updated guide examines What Is Kerning? and organizes the essential facts, background, and practical takeaways in clear American English.

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What is kerning?

Kerning refers to the distance between the characters of a font. Without kerning, each character takes up a block of space and the next character is printed after it. When applying kerning to a font, characters can overlap vertically. This does not mean that the characters actually stick together; instead, they allow two characters to share the same vertical space.

For example, when the letters A and V are placed next to each other, they will take up less overall space if overlapping. This is because the right part of A and the left part of V match. If kerning is used for two characters, you can draw a vertical line starting at the top left of the letter V and it will go through the lower right part of the letter A.

Kerning is useful because it allows to place more text in a certain space. Longer articles can be arranged in newspapers and magazines with limited space. It also looks more natural because when we write by hand, we often write letters that overlap each other. Many text editing programs as well as image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, allow users to create kerning characters. These programs often have advanced settings that allow the user to determine the degree of strictness between characters.