Alternatively known as kerning, kern describes the spacing between characters. Kerning is used to enhance the overall appearance of a typeface. For example, in the word “WAV,” kerning bunches the letters together, taking less space and improving the look. Many advanced word processors, like Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer, support the ability to adjust character spacing.
Example of kerning
This text has kerning applied to it and should have additional spacing between each letter.
- Example of kerning.
- How to apply kerning in Microsoft Word.
- How to apply kerning to text on a web page.
How to apply kerning in Microsoft Word
- Open Microsoft Word.
- Highlight the text you want to adjust.
- Once highlighted, click Format, Font, and then the Character Spacing tab.
- In this section, you can adjust the scale, spacing, position, or kerning on fonts above a specific size.
How to apply kerning to text on a web page
Kerning can be applied to any text using the letter-spacing CSS attribute, as shown in the examples below.
Certain fonts and printers do not support kerning.
In the above example, the H1 HTML tag and the kern class has additional kerning. If you add that CSS code to your document, then add the “kern” class to a paragraph element, the text appears as shown below.
This text has kerning
Font, Typography terms
