Typography Word of the Day: Kern

Next in our Word of the Day series

This word may be a dead obvious one to discuss, but we have found in our personal experience that the kern is widely known but sometimes painfully forgotten and just a bit misunderstood.

Kern is, as used by typographers, a verb. When we kern letters, we adjust the spacing between them towards the ends of giving the overall subjective impression of even spacing, so that our words hang together as units. From the time of metal type, each letterform, as made, occupies a certain space. If put next to each other, for example, the majuscule T and the minuscule o, each in thier own space, seem farther apart than the minusucle o and the minuscule m we might follow it up with.

To solve this we kern the T and the o – in this case, we decrease the letterspacing between the T and the o, effectively nudging the o a bit under the cross stroke of the T until the space between the T and the o feels equivalent to that between the o and the notional m. Kerning can involve increasing letterspace as well (search your own fonts and play around…we’re sure you can find examples).

It is said that in the beginnings of movable type, letters were kerned sometimes by shaving off parts of the metal type so that the letterforms could overlap the next and sit closer. Metal typefounders also took to the practice of casting frequently kerned letters together as one piece. This feature lives on in the kerning pair concept, where layout and word processing software automatically kerns certain letter pairs according to information in the font files. More advanced programs allow the user to self-adjust these.

Kerning is most necessary when type is large – headlines, subheads, and logotypes, for instance. Kerning is mostly unnecessary in body and text type; it was the great Goudy himself who famously said “those who would letterspace lower case would steal sheep” (we will admit not having a complete grasp of sheep thievery but think we get the sentiment).

Kerning over ranges of letters is called (expectedly) range kerning but more frequently called “tracking”. One tracks type when copyfitting or when the feeling of space amongst the text over a story is too expansive.