Non-Designer’s Type Book, The, Second Edition

Auto Kerning

Page layout applications usually have a checkbox that allows you to tell your program to automatically take advantage of the kerning pairs, if you are using a font that contains them. In most programs you can also specify a point size above which the kerning pairs are automatically used. It’s neither necessary nor desirable to auto kern small sizes of type (less than about 7 or 8 point) because when type is set small it should actually have more space between characters, not less.

Adobe InDesign utilizes two methods of auto kerning. Metrics kerning, the default method, uses the font’s built-in kerning pairs which are built into the font metrics. Optical kerning takes the shapes of each letter pair into consideration and adds or removes ...