Kerning vs. Tracking Spacing Mechanics

Mastery of digital typography requires understanding horizontal character spacing:

Kerning

The selective adjustment of space between two specific adjacent characters to compensate for their optical shapes.

• Letter pairs like 'AV', 'To', 'Wa', and 'Ty' require custom kerning because the diagonal or overhanging strokes naturally collide or leave awkward gaps.
• In digital design, kerning is applied to large headlines, logos, and hero titles where spacing defects are magnified.

Tracking (Letter-Spacing)

Uniform horizontal spacing applied evenly across an entire word, phrase, or paragraph.

• Rule: Apply subtle positive tracking (+0.05em to +0.1em) to all-caps text and small eyebrow tags to prevent uppercase letters from clumping into an unreadable block.
• Warning: Never apply positive tracking to body copy—it separates syllables and drastically slows reading speed.