The invisible art of adjusting the space between letters

Cultures · Published 1 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: When letters like 'r' and 'n' sit too close, they transform into an 'm'. This typographic error, known as 'keming,' highlights the critical importance of kerning: the precise, often invisible adjustment of space between specific character pairs to ensure visual balance.

The term 'kern' finds its origins in the French word 'carne', meaning a projecting angle or pen quill, derived from the Latin 'cardo', meaning hinge. In the era of metal type, a 'kern' was a physical part of a metal letterform that overhung the edge of its block to allow for overlapping adjacent characters. Because physically modifying these metal matrices was labor-intensive and expensive, kerning was historically reserved for only the most problematic pairs, such as 'VA' or 'AV'.

In modern digital typography, kerning is no longer about physical metal but about numerical adjustments. Designers use values expressed in font units—often based on a scale of 1000 or 2048 units per em. Most adjustments are negative, pulling letters like 'T', 'V', or 'A' closer to their neighbors to close gaps, while positive kerning is used to separate characters like a lowercase 'f' from a right parenthesis. While 'metric kerning' relies on these pre-set tables within a font, 'optical kerning' uses advanced algorithms to calculate the ideal spacing based on the actual outlines of the letters.

The complexity of modern fonts like OpenType has moved away from simple lists of pairs toward sophisticated 'glyph classes.' This system groups characters with identical left or right outlines—such as grouping 'v', 'w', and 'y'—to economize storage. However, even with these advanced systems, human intervention remains vital. A skilled typographer can identify issues that algorithms miss, such as when a diacritic mark makes a pair appear too close, or when 'contextual kerning' is required to manage the spacing of three characters in a sequence, such as an 'f', a period, and a quotation mark.

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