Kerning

This tutorial shows two ways of adjusting the space between letters in the kerning tab. There is also a spacing tab if you want to change the space for all letters and not just one pair.

  1. Open the kerning tab (Ctrl+K on Windows and Command+K on Mac)
  2. Type the word you want to kern. In this case “Excellent”.
  3. Click on the small marker between the letter 'x' and 'c'.
  4. Move the marker with the mouse or keyboard arrows.
  5. Repeat this process for all letters that need kerning.
  6. You can switch kerning pars with Ctrl + Arrow Key on Windows and Command + Arrow Key on Mac,

Kerning classes

Kerning all pairs separately can be a very time consuming process. If several letters needs to be kerned against a glyph is it possible to create a kerning class (a group of letters) and adjust the space for all glyphs in the class with the same amount.

This example shows how to kern letters with a bowl facing to the left ('c', 'd', 'e') againt x. The space between x and all letters in the class will be adjusted at the same time.

  1. Type the word you want to kern (excellent).
  2. Type some combination of the letter that should be kerned and letters from the class (xc, xd, xe).
  3. Click on the AV button to create a new kerning class.
  4. Right click on the class or hold Command and click on the class.
  5. Type the letters you want to include in the class, separated by space (“c d e”).
  6. Type the first letter in the pair ('x') and click on the class. Note that the marker is thicker to indicate that a group of letters will be kerned and not just one pair.
  7. Move the marker with the mouse or keyboard arrows. The letter x will be kerned against c, d and e instead of just c.

Kerning of individual pairs will always be applied after kerning of classes. This means that you can kern all letters against all other letters in a class and still fine tune the space for glyphs that need to be kerned differently. If several classes applies to one kerning pair will the last kerning class in the list be applied.

Some programs does not have kerning enabled by default. Check “kerning for fonts” under “format font” to enable kerning in Microsoft Word.