3. How to Kern Like a Pro

This is the third of a 10-part series of the Ten Keys to Seamless Typesetting.

Kerning is a necessary part of the typesetting process. Whereas in the past this could have meant filing the edge of a sort to fit two characters closer together, today the process is much faster.

To a large extent, kerning is pre-programmed into a professional font, but not every letter combination is necessarily taken care of and even if it is, not necessarily to the liking of the typesetter.

However, even a well-kerned font cannot supply kerning pairs for a character in another font, such as a transition from italic to roman. If the word proof is set in italic inside roman parentheses, the italic f may collide with the closing parenthesis. Optical or manual kerning can help resolve such cases.

In many fonts the problem can often occur with closing quotation marks and characters such as the question mark and exclamation point.

The video below illustrates this problem and then using Peter Kahrel’s kern script demonstrates how this can be solved and saved for future use.

If you have a manuscript that needs typesetting and you want to make sure it’s correctly kerned, then contact us for a no-obligation discussion.

Looking forward to your comments below!