Meaning & use
kerning
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Meanings
noununcountabletechnical
The small adjustment of the space between particular pairs of letters so that printed or displayed text looks evenly spaced.
Grammar: Uncountable: say 'good kerning', not 'a kerning' or 'kernings'.
Patterns
- kerning between something
- adjust the kerning
- tight/loose kerning
The designer fixed the kerning between the capital An and the following V.
Bad kerning made the shop sign read like a different word.
Modern fonts often include built-in kerning for common letter pairs.
noununcountabletechnical
The act or process of tightening or loosening the space between individual letters in a piece of text.
Grammar: Refers to the activity, so it is used like 'typesetting' or 'editing'.
Patterns
- do the kerning
- kerning of a headline
Kerning the headline took her almost an hour.
He spent the afternoon kerning the logo by hand.
Common combinations
- adjust the kerning
- You can adjust the kerning in most design programs.
- bad kerning
- The poster is famous for its bad kerning.
- kerning pair
- The font file lists every kerning pair separately.
- automatic kerning
- Turn on automatic kerning before you export the file.
- manual kerning
- Manual kerning gives you more control over a logo.
Synonyms and how they differ
- letter spacing
- A looser everyday term that can mean either kerning between pairs or spacing across a whole word.
- spacing
- A general word for any gaps in text; it does not show that you are changing only certain letter pairs.
Word family
- kern verb
- To adjust the space between two particular letters.
- kerned adjective
- Describing text whose letter pairs have been adjusted.
Commonly confused: kerning or tracking? kerning or leading?
kerning vs tracking
Tracking changes the space evenly across a whole word or line, while kerning changes only specific letter pairs.
kerning vs leading
Leading is the vertical space between lines of text, not the horizontal space between letters.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'kerning' correctly?
Choose one answer.
Kerning is about the horizontal space between individual letter pairs, so 'between the T and the o' fits. Option 2 describes leading (vertical space), option 3 describes tracking or overall spacing, and option 4 again mixes kerning with line spacing.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “kerning”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.