kern

A corn; grain; kernel.

The last handful or sheaf reaped at the harvest.

The harvest home.

A doll or figurine raised in celebration of a successful harvest; kern-baby.

Any part of a letter which extends into the space used by another letter.

A few types have a portion of the face letter projecting over the body, as in the letter f ; this projection is called the kern, and in combination with other letters the projecting part generally extends over the next letter, as in fe. In those combinations, wherein the kern would come in contact with another letter, compound types are cast, as in the case of ff, fi, fl, ffi, ffl.

To adjust the horizontal space between selected pairs of letters (characters or glyphs); to perform such adjustments to a portion of text, according to preset rules.

If you need to kern anything beyond the most commonly used pairs, you can use applications software such as Adobe PageMaker to customize pairs.

Especially consider kerning if you are printing on a relatively high-resolution printer, such as a 600-dpi (dots per inch) laser printer.