Kerning is a great element of typography

If you are not a layout designer and not a designer, then most likely you have not heard such words as size, leading, capital, glyph, kerning . Today we will analyze what kerning is.

Kerning is an element of typography. If a word or logo contains complex letters with protruding elements that create a large distance between them, an excellent solution is to put them closer to each other, so that the density of the word is visually more uniform. In other words, kerning is a change in the interval between adjacent letters. It can be negative - when the letters approach each other, and positive - when the letters expand.

Kerning is in the computer science inter-character interval, which can be assigned one of three parameters: compacted, sparse or normal. The normal interval is determined automatically for the font. You can manually make a font sparse or compressed.

What does kerning play in the text design?

The distance between the signs is a very important characteristic of the text. You experience the influence of kerning right now, while reading this article. Correctly selected distance between letters will make the text easy to read, and if the information in the text is submitted competently and interestingly, all this together will facilitate the assimilation of new information.

An excellent example of kerning is the Adidas logo: dense and strict, it inspires the reader with a sense of calm and confidence.

What kinds of kerning exist?

Kerning can be done using automatic functions of optical (Optical) or metric (Metric) kerning.

Optical kerning focuses on the form of letters, and with this form selected and optimized the interval between the series of standing symbols. Some programs provide detailed recommendations for kerning, but if there is at least a minimum of inline kerning data in the font, or if it does not contain any kerning at all, or if you use different pins and headsets in a row or a separate word, you need to apply optical kerning to the Latin text.

Metric kerning uses certain pairs of letters, which include most of the existing fonts. They contain information about the necessary interval between letters in specific letter pairs, such as: Ty, Tr, Ta, To, La, Wa, Yo, etc.

In some cases, when the application of automatic kerning does not improve the situation, it is possible to use manual kerning. If the skill is perfected to the ideal, manual kerning is preferable to the metric or optical kerning. An interesting game for honing the skill is KERNTYPE.

Microsoft Word

Kerning in the "Word" is quite simple. In order to apply kerning, you must:

1. Select the text you want to change.
2. Go to the path: Home → Font → Advanced (in 2007 "Word" you need to go to "Inter-character interval").
3. Check the "Kerning" check box for the size characters and enter the desired number in the field.

The font-kerning property in cascading tables

In CSS, kerning is the implementation of the font-kerning property. The syntax is:

• Font-kerning: none | normal | auto | initial | inherit | unset

In the case of auto (or initial), the client's browser will determine whether kerning is needed or not. Using none prevents the browser from applying kerning, while normal, on the contrary, indicates that kerning is applied to the text. Initial or unset - text inherits the value of the parent.

Kerning for the title

Many people think that kerning should only be applied to large letters and only to certain letter pairs, but since kerning is a way to improve the readability of the entire text, this opinion is incorrect. In the American and European traditions, kerning for capital letters is accepted, in Cyrillic it is not an automatic option. Until now, on the Internet, it is customary to type headings in uppercase letters, and this is atavism. Lowercase letters usually look prettier and better than uppercase. The text written in capital letters is worse readable, since the person perceives not the written word itself, but its image.

Instead of the conclusion, I want to remind you that the writing originated long ago. Earlier, for recording speech used stylo and clay tablets, leather, plaques, birch bark scrolls. They were replaced by paper and a pen. Working with the pen, a person had to be careful, because one wrong move spoiled the entire text, and it had to be rewritten anew. But people tried to decorate and highlight the text even in such difficult conditions. The uppercase letters were decorated with a red cinnabar. The text was decorated with curls, ornaments were drawn in the fields. Calligraphy appeared.

The process of printing was also very difficult. The manuscripts were printed in the printing house, and this required cumbersome and expensive equipment, as well as many skilled workers. It was impossible to publish your manuscript independently. And only with the advent of computers and with their universal access printing methods became available to all. Kerning is the most common example of improving the readability of texts, and it simply needs to be used if you want to draw readers' attention to their publications.