If you are not a typesetter or designer, you most likely 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 complex letters with prominent elements that create a large distance between them are located nearby in the word or logo, then it is an excellent solution to put them closer to each other, so that the word density is visually more uniform. In other words, kerning is a change in the spacing between adjacent letters. It can be negative when the letters approach each other, and positive when the letters move apart.
Kerning is an intersymbol interval in computer science that can be assigned one of three parameters: compacted, sparse, or normal. Normal spacing is automatically determined for the font. You can make a font sparse or compacted manually.
What is the meaning of kerning in the text design?
The distance between characters is a very important characteristic of the text. You are experiencing kerning right now as you read this article. Correctly selected distance between letters will make the text easy to read, and if the information in the text is presented correctly and interestingly, then all this together will facilitate the assimilation of new information.
An excellent example of kernig is the Adidas logo: tight and austere, it inspires the reader with a sense of calm and confidence.
What types of kerning are there?
Kerning can be done using the automatic Optical or Metric kerning functions.
In optical kerning, attention is paid to the shape of the letters, and taking into account this shape, the interval between adjacent characters is selected and optimized. Some programs contain detailed recommendations for kerning, but if the font has a minimum of built-in kerning data or does not contain them at all, or if different pins and headsets are used in a line or in a single word, then 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 required spacing between letters in specific letter pairs, such as: Ty, Tr, Ta, To, La, Wa, Yo, etc.
In some cases, when the use of automatic kerning does not improve the situation, it is possible to use manual kerning. If the skill is honed to the ideal, then manual kerning is preferable to metric or optical. An interesting skill refinement game is KERNTYPE.
Microsoft Word
Kerning in the Word is quite simple. In order to apply kerning, you must:
- Select the text you want to change.
- Go the way: Home → Font → Advanced (in 2007, Word needs to go to Intersign Interval).
- Check the "Kerning" checkbox for character size and enter the desired number in the field.
Font-kerning property in cascading tables
In CSS, kerning is an implementation of the font-kerning property. The syntax is as follows:
- 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 kerning, while normal, on the contrary, means that kerning will be applied to the text. Initial or unset - the text inherits the value of the parent.
Heading kerning
Many people think that kerning should be applied only to large letters and only to certain letter pairs, but since kerning is a way to increase the readability of the entire text, this opinion is incorrect. In American and European traditions, kerning is used for capital letters; in Cyrillic, this is not an automatic option. It’s still common practice on the Internet to type headings in capital letters, and that’s atavism. Lowercase letters usually look prettier and better than uppercase. A text written in capital letters is less readable, since a person perceives not the written word itself, but its image.
Instead of a conclusion, I would like to remind you that writing began a long time ago. Previously, steel and clay tablets, leather, plaques, birch bark scrolls were used to record speech. They were replaced by paper and pen. When working with a pen, a person had to be careful, because one wrong move spoiled the whole text, and he had to rewrite it again. But people sought to decorate and highlight the text even in such difficult conditions. Capital letters were issued in red cinnabar. The text was decorated with curls, ornaments were drawn in the margins. Calligraphy has appeared.
The printing process was also very complex. Manuscripts were printed in a printing house, and this required bulky and expensive equipment, as well as many skilled workers. It was impossible to publish my manuscript on my own. And only with the advent of computers and with their universal accessibility did printing techniques become available to everyone. Kerning is the most common example of improving the readability of texts, and you just need to use it if you want to draw the attention of readers to your publications.