Kerning

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Kerning brings the letters closer, with their serifs slightly over each other.
Top: The word "morn", typeset in Times New Roman. Middle: With reduced spacing between letters, the R and N appear to merge together into an M, causing the word to instead read as "mom". Bottom: The word "mom" for comparison.
Poor kerning may, in a worst-case scenario, result in different words being read than those which were intended.

In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the space between two specific characters, or letterforms, in a font. It is not to be confused with tracking, by which spacing is adjusted uniformly over a range of characters.

In a well-kerned font, the two-dimensional blank spaces between each pair of characters all have a visually similar area.

The related term kern denotes a part of a typed letter that overhangs the edge of the type block.

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