Spatial adjusting between certain characters along a text line. Natural shape and slope improve character appearance. Letter combinations like WA and VA look awkward and slow smooth eye flow along a text line. Kerning smoothes the letter shapes. In italic types, this becomes crucial. Increasing font size as in headlines will show poor kerning. Adobe PageMaker, Adobe Indesign, and Quark’Xpress are well-known and used modern desktop publishing programs. Each allows both automatic and manual kerning. Simultaneous spatial adjustment of many letters along text lines is known as range kerning. Also refer to letter spacing and tracking.
Black’s Law Online Dictionary
