Kerning

The selective adjustment of horizontal space between specific pairs of characters to achieve optically even spacing. Certain letter combinations — such as AV, To, and WA — create visually uneven gaps when set at their default widths; kerning compensates by pulling them closer together (or, less commonly, pushing them apart). Well-designed

Font ship with extensive kerning tables (stored in the

OpenType GPOS table) that apply these corrections automatically, but manual kerning is still required in display and headline settings where optical precision is paramount.