User Guide

Chapter Five
Metrics: Spacing and Kerning
Spacing
Kerning
Auto Spacing
Auto Kerning
The Metrics Window
Importing & Exporting Metrics
Advanced Metrics
Advanced Auto Spacing
Advanced Auto Kerning
Font metrics is the term used to describe how letters are
spaced when they are typed. Do metrics matter? The
answer depends on what you want to accomplish with your
fonts. If you are producing a logo or graphic font that relies
mostly on shapes rather than words, you might not need to
use either kerning or spacing information. Or, if you are a
novice and you are just playing around with fonts and aren’t
yet ready to pursue the finer details, you might delay reading
this section until later on. Professional type designers
usually do use metrics when they create a font. There are a
few good reasons for doing this, which you may or may not
already know.
The untrained eye may not notice kerning and spacing in
printed text, but any reader will experience text as more
difficult to perceive if it has not been well kerned and
spaced. We know that our brains like for the type to
coalesce in meaningful groups—and the more clearly
defined the meaningful groups are in the visual field—the
quicker we will be able to read the information. When
Fontographer User's Manual
5: Metrics: Spacing and Kerning Page #1