Talk:Kerning

Figure?
The last sentence in the "Examples of Kerning" section refers to a figure on the page. There is no figure on the page. Is the figure coming back, or should this reference be removed?

In Metal Typsetting
Currently, the caption to the diagram / figure says: "The glyph on the right is kerned to overlap the following character." Should it in fact say: "The glyph on the right is kerned to overlap the previous character." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.101.19.116 (talk) 22:43, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Little late on this response, but I think you are overlooking the fact that the type will be reversed when printed. That is, while the overlap is with the physically previous character as the type is laid out it is with the character that will be printed following this character. --Khajidha (talk) 11:01, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes; I see it now, but I came here to the Talk Page with the same comment in mind. The caption as it is, "The glyph on the right is kerned to overlap the following character", should perhaps say "When reversed onto paper, the right glyph will appear to overlap its following character", or to that effect. —— John Sinclair (talk) 19:12, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Kerning in wordprocessors

 * "However, many word processors, such as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org do not enable kerning by default."

OpenOffice 2.0 has pair kerning enabled by default. It would suprise me if older versions and Word don't? —Ruud 23:21, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft Word 2003 for Windows XP has the kerning feature as described by the article but it is not enabled by default. —ryker 01:08, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I know that MS Word 2010 has kerning enabled by default. I thought that was true of Word 2003 and 2007 also. On any of them, you can go into the font properties, and there is a kerning option that you can enable or disable for a particular font. On all headings in 2010, it comes enabled. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Meviin (talk • contribs) 05:35, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Hog image
I've removed the "Hog" image which User:Stevage added. He said it was an "extreme" example, but much of what made it look so "extreme" was the fact that the letters were italicized. Iticicized letters overlap even without any kerning - because the invisible "boxes" that they're contained within in are forward leaning paralelagrams instead of rectangles, whereas kerning involves more of an irregular interlocking between letters of different shapes and sizes so that they fit well together. The text did look like it was kerned somewhat (assuming it's a typeface and not just hand-drawn letters), but I'd say about 75% of the overlap is do to italicization and not kerning. In the future, images and discussion of kerning italicized letters might be a good idea, but the lead image should be non-italicized to avoid undue obfuscation.

Also, who ever made the image that's currently the lead (the "AV" and "Wa" examples"), I think it would be a good idea for them to modify it so that each example has at least three letters. With only two letters present, it's a lot more difficult to see the difference between kerning and tracking.  Helvetica 05:25, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok. For the lead image, can I suggest making a much simpler, more symbolic image, rather than one that attempts to explain the entire article in a picture? Seriously, just make an image with two letters - the absolute minimum, so that it "represents" kerning. Then use other images later in the article to really explain the concept. Stevage 06:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Stevage - I hate to seem all contrary, but I disagree with your proposal and here's why... It's pretty easy for people to understand that tracking and kerning both involve changing the distance between letters. We probably don't even need a picture to show that. What the pictures need to show is more specifically what tracking and kerning are and how they differ from eachother. Now if there are only two letters in a document - say an A and a T - then adjusting the tracking and adjusting the kerning will have exactly the same effect. There's only a difference when a third letter is added - so that say instead of AT you now have ATE. With ATE, when you make the kerning tighter, the A and the T get closer to eachother but the distance between the T and the E remains the same. Whereas with tracking adjustments, the distances between all three of the letters would increase or decrease. So to show that kerning has taken place, we must show it in context with at least a third letter where the distance doesn't change. People need to be able to see that the distance between two (or more) of the characters has changed relative to the distance between some of the other characters, which has remained the same. And it's also invaluable to show this side by side with tracking adjustments of the same word so that there's a clear visual comparison between the two. I'd be happy to modify my illustration if you think there's a way it could be more clear, but I feel that if any of these key components are removed then this will obfuscate things and make it less helpful for the readers. Helvetica 14:59, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

PS - in response to your new caption for the hog image - I never said that those letters weren't kerned - I said they probably were (assuming that it's actually a typeface and not hand-drawn). What I did say was that 1. Italicized letters overlap even if they're not kerned, and 2. Using an image with italicized text adds another variable to the equation - thus causing undue obfuscation and making it a poor choice of an image for introducing the concept to the readers. I thought I had explained that earlier, but I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. Helvetica 15:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Which WAR is better?
Note that I am not a font expert, but the auto-kerned version of "WAR" in the example image looks better to me. The space between the W and A does not match with the space between the A and R in the manually kerned version. The longer I look at the auto kerned version, the more I find that something inbetween would be good. The auto-kerned version does not look perfectly "connected" whereas the manually kerned version is a bit "inhomogenous". (What are the technical terms for these?) Any comments from the experts?


 * I definitely wouldn't consider myself an "expert" on typography by any means, but I did create the image - along with several others on here when I was bored and playing around with some graphic design software and some new fonts I downloaded. If you look at the image at full resolution and, you can see that the W and the A (at the closest point) are actually farther apart than the A and the R in the manual version.  Though I see how it could appear that they're closer together - due to the heavy degree of overlap.  They maybe should be a bit farther apart still, but not as far apart as the auto-kerned version.  Helvetica 05:24, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

My opinion of 38 years in the business is this: if you are looking only at the word "WAR," as opposed to WARBLE or WARMONGER, I would vote for the auto-kerned example over the manually kerned example. The auto-kerned example reads as WA R. What you are trying to achieve is a visual balance for the word as a whole, as best you can given the letters you must work with. You cannot just look at kerning pairs. If you are setting the words WARBLE or WARMONGER, then you cannot just pick up the WAR and attache either BLE or MONGER after it. You have to look at the entire word and kern according. This assumes the word WAR, WARBLE or WARMONGER is the extend what you are working with-- as in a large 200 point headline. If you are setting the headline DECLARES WAR then you have to view the entire phrase and strive for the best overall visual appearance. Of course you can resort to creating ligatures, (e.g. AR) which can be acceptable, but I would do so sparingly. You look at it case-by-case. I would also point out the goals are different depending upon what you are setting-- headlines, subheads, and text, plus the font(s) you are using. Revans1953 (talk) 09:47, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
 * http://www.rit.edu/emcs/admissions/bca/blog/item/that-kerning-is-tight JMP EAX (talk) 22:56, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * And I'm almost tempted to add http://xkcd.com/1015/ to the article. JMP EAX (talk) 23:26, 7 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I am a professional type designer, and work a lot with spacing and kerning my typefaces. My view is that the third WAR is very greatly overkerned; optically, this creates an ungainly hole between A and R. Typefaces such as this, with very heavy, quite wide serifs and low contrast, are notoriously difficult to space and kern. But as will all kerning, it is generally better to kern things a little too loose than a little too tight. With digital, scalable fonts, it is best to make them work in small sizes, which typically needs looser kerning and spacing. For bigger sizes, manual kerning should be applied. My approach would be to kern quite a bit looser than in the auto-kerned example here. The bad kerning in the example makes me think this is a ripoff of Clarendon. For comparison, here is a screenshot of Linotype Clarendon with kerning applied. Devanatha (talk) 12:33, 4 May 2016 (UTC)



diacritics
A word on kerning and diacritics? Do fonts commonly define kerning pairs of which the second member is a diacritic? Such as defining different (negative) spacing for m + combining macron (m̄) vs. a + combining macron (ā)? which fonts have that? dab (&#5839;) 13:05, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


 * These aren’t kerning, and aren’t implemented as kerning either. In a TTF/OpenType font I’ve been editing in FontForge, instead, the the combining character and the base character both have an ‘anchor’, and the anchor points are matched up when combined. So I accidentally once put anchor 1 where anchor 0 should’ve been and vice versa, and had a letter that had the accents that were meant to go above the letter beneath (and vice versa).
 * But also, if the combination of combining character and the base character already have a precomposed pair (as with ā), then I’ve found that XeLaTeX and I assume other ICU-based software like OpenOffice.org use the precombined character regardless of whether that’s what was encoded in the document.
 * —Felix the Cassowary 15:50, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the previous poster misunderstood the question. Anyway, yes, most professionally produced fonts will include kernpairs that feature the diacritic versions of the base characters - with the same or different kerning value depending on the design of the font and the features of the pair. In the case of OpenType fonts using attached accents, or class-based kerning the situation is different, but much more flexible. Dpmarshall 17:11, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

"Two-dimensional" spaces
In a well-kerned font, the two-dimensional blank spaces between each pair of letters all have similar area. Why "two-dimensional"? What other dimensionality of blank space might be appropriate here? 86.137.107.36 21:29, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * It does seem like there should be a better way of saying it, but I'd say the instinct at that point is to think purely in terms of the left-right distance between the characters (one-dimensional), instead of the actual total area of the space (which I think is the intended point). Either way, it could stand some cleanup from a better typographer than I. --Rindis 16:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm late to the game on this discussion, but I seem to recall that the pairing "oo" was often lowered by a half point. So the word "took" and "look" would have the oo's moved depending upon the position of the descender of the starting letter.  This was applied to both letters, but it stands to reason that there might be cause to lower a j slightly if tucked under a T with a very strong serif overhang on the top bar, and this would be part of the kerning table.Tgm1024 (talk) 21:36, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Kerneling vs. Kerning
The opening paragraph states, "The word kerneling derives from..." However, is this a typo which should actually read, "The word kerning derives from..." ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by OnlineCop (talk • contribs) 14:41, 7 April 2007 (UTC).

Point of disagreement
However, it is rarely a sufficient alternative for manual kerning, as some characters may appear to an algorithmic comparison to be spaced very closely together, but to a human reader might appear to be spaced too far apart; especially when the only part of a glyph that is 'too close' is a diacritic sign.

This may have been true 15 years ago, but my personal experience in the field is that kerning these days is not manual. It's pair-specific and font-specific so that it always looks just right. In the occasional case where something doesn't look quite right there may be some "fudging" of the result, but that's usually when we're trying to make something fit into a space where it wouldn't normally; or where we're trying to spread things up to reduce unused space in a particular line or column. For the most part, the programmatic kerning does exactly what we want it to do - have a nice, tight appearance, and take up less space. 204.152.119.46 14:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


 * "pair-specific" (as you put it) *is* manual kerning. "Programatic Kerning" is a broken concept of an algorithm taking a look at how the glyph is layed out and deciding, for example, that this serif is too close, or that base is just far enough away, etc.  That is never a valid substitute for a human visual inspection and a manually crafted pairing table.  As soon as you have a human built kerning table, you have by definition been employing "manual kerning".Tgm1024 (talk) 20:16, 7 August 2015 (UTC)


 * People who do graphic design can not stop themselves from excessively hand-kerning text. People who are producing straight matter (plain blocks of text, as for a book or other document) do not ever manually kern.  Exception: people who are including a block of straight matter in their graphic design may not be able to help themselves from hand-kerning the entire block.  I think this conflict is just a case of different worlds colliding.  Battling McGook (talk) 02:13, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

the top left of the upper diagram seems wrong
Does anyone agree that the upper left quadrant of File:Track_Kern.png shows kerning, not tracking? 75.55.199.5 (talk) 21:14, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The definition of track "uniform spacing" _could_ apply to the top image, but the placement of the fullstop looks odd and does not look like uniformly spaced. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.105.138.211 (talk) 16:56, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

confusing image
I was looking at the image at the top for a minute until I realized that there was a transition from left to right in both cases. Maybe somebody should put arrows from left to right for the examples. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.43.137.82 (talk) 20:18, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I can't understand the first image either. The image just below "Tracking" seems to be applied some kerning (just like the second line in ), while the image just below "Kerning" has no kerning, (like the first line of the image I linked previously). (David.stosik (talk) 06:21, 10 February 2012 (UTC))

Agreed. This image is almost incomprehensible. The image directly below "Tracking" shows kerning and the image below "Kerning" doesn't show kerning. If the left and right images are to be read as a "before" and "after" (which still doesn't make sense to me), then the figure needs to explain this. The image should be fixed or removed. Ross Fraser (talk) 01:41, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Monospace
The article states (twice) that monospaced fonts can't be kerned. This is false; I have developed an experimental technique (see and ) which uses deviation of position to produce kerning in monospaced text. (It also does some other things, like ligatures, by means of contextual glyph substitution, where the kerning is part of the 'context'.)

Obviously this hasn't been covered in a Reliable Source™, so it's not clear what, if anything, should be changed in the article. PT 06:31, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
 * What you've done is make the font not monospaced, by definition. Changing the glyphs might work, but shifting them violates what monospaced means. — trlkly 00:01, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I completely agree. Once you've mucked with the inter-glyph spacing in any way, you've specifically thrown away the "mono" designation.  BTW, there used to be endless battles roughly relating to this "back in the day" in my prepress years.  There was a camp that insisted that even bold and italic versions of a monospaced font should be the same width as a "regular" font.  Software engineers prefer this for their IDEs so keep text aligned even when keywords are in bold.  A counter faction argued against this.  Quite an interesting little struggle.  Many monospaced fonts these days are only monospaced within their respective attribute.  (All bold characters are the same width, all italics are the same width, all regulars are the same width, but they each are allowed to be slightly different as groups).

Keming source
Is the Wired interview really an inappropriate WP:PRIMARY for sourcing the neologism "keming"? It isn't the interviewee using the word in a response to a question, it's the interviewing journalist deciding to write "you may know him as the guy who invented the word keming, his coinage for bad kerning" in the article's introduction. --McGeddon (talk) 11:51, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * It's little different from the interviewer saying, "My guest tonight is Smith. His new book, in stores now, is Such and Such." -- even weaker than your typical passing reference. This term was introduced in 2008. If it's got any traction there should no problem finding non-marginal sources by now. See WP:NEO. EEng (talk) 20:19, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * See also related discussion at Keming. 183.89.161.174 (talk) 07:00, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Illustration caption gives misleading info about auto-kerning
The illustration on the right is captioned: "Three versions of "WAR" in the Clarendon typeface: The top version has no kerning, the middle version has auto-kerning applied, and the bottom version has manually adjusted kerning." However, this is misleading since it implies that you can visually tell the difference between automatic and manual kerning, which is not the case. In this case, the bottom example simply has tighter kerning than the middle example. Both could have been equally the result of some automatic kerning algorithm, just as both could have equally been the result of someone manually kerning them. 136.186.72.46 (talk) 05:24, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Kerning in browsers
I always dislike text like that found in this section, as software feature lists frequently change making the entry quickly obsolete. Further, the text lists a version number for IE, but doesn't list it for the others, this inconsistency is odd. Better text would show a table indicating things like "kerning was supported in Opera on such-and-such a date in version such-and-such." This makes it a historic record (which is unchanging) vs. a current-status snapshot (which gets quickly out of date) Jpbjoel (talk) 14:35, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Are you volunteering to work on it? Surely something like would be better... JMP EAX (talk) 00:53, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Notched Metal Typesetting
This section is either very misleading or entirely wrong. It was never standard practice to notch or corner cut sorts for kerning. Kerned letters simply had the face of the letter overhang the next sort. Just as shown in the accompanying image.

If this practice existed at all, I've never heard of it. Googling for "typesetting notched sort" or "typesetting corner cut sort" produces nothing of any use at all. I've never come across a single image that shows this might be the case.

There is a more modern practice called "sector kerning". This was a primitive kerning algorithm that generalized letter shapes into sectors. It's possible there was a mechanical type system over the years that did something like this, but if so, it was relatively obscure, and as I said, I haven't seen or heard of it.

Unless anyone can come up with a source for this, I'm going to scrap it completely and rewrite it. Battling McGook (talk) 19:00, 10 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Rewritten. Will add references later.  Battling McGook (talk) 21:59, 14 January 2014 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth I've seen "kerned" type, e.g. a W with a corner filed away by hand. It has also been called kerfing, after the name of the sort of metal cutting file you'd use to do it. Barefootliam (talk) 05:38, 8 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I have now found some images on the web of fonts that are kerned in this way. So far I've primarily seen large headline fonts done this way, primarily woodcut, but also one that looks like metal.  I did find one modern shop filing away corners of a a smaller font to kern letters together.  This is a completely custom thing - the sorts become unusable after that (although in their case it looked like  hot metal type so it didn't matter anyway).  If we can find a reliable source that talks about any of these practices and when they have been used, we can add that information to the article. Battling McGook (talk) 16:33, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

TeX?
Does anyone know how TeX82 handles kerning? (I know the newer XeTeX and so forth use OpenType and such.) JMP EAX (talk) 22:20, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Quick note on positive vs. negative kerning semi-historically.
My background for a large part of my software engineering experience has been in prepress (from the 80's on). Back then, the groups I was part of referred to the kerning values in the opposite way that they're referred to here.

Kerning the "o" under the "T" (a closing in) was known as "positive kerning", and used positive values. The values referred to how much to close glyphs together. Similarly, "negative kerning" is what was applied to glyphs such as two sans-serif LC letter els next to each other or "el eye" parings to spread them apart a little.

I'm not saying that what I was used to back then was the way, but I thought I'd mention it in case others had that same experience.Tgm1024 (talk) 21:24, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Malformed comments at top of talk page moved here
Talk:Kerning to me — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.0.55.147 (talk) 19:33, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, am I correct in saying that "correct" kerning roughly corresponds to the axiom "same area inside a letter as outside it" or similar? If so, we should say so. -- Finlay McWalter 19:38, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The etymology given on this page broadly agrees with the OED's etymology, but in many typography books "kern" is supposed to be derived from the way that letters are packed together like kernels of corn. Should the Wikipidea page mention this (common but apparently incorrect?) etymology? --Wiml 04:26, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

spacing
Is this just about horizontal spacing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.54.207.205 (talk) 12:56, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

proportional fount
Could you kern in a non-proportional fount? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.54.207.205 (talk) 12:59, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, Anon. user, you shouldn't kern a Monospaced font because a Monospaced font has a fixed letter width, meaning that all letters have the same width... -24.180.87.149 (talk) 22:45, 25 January 2019 (UTC)