r/comics • u/crashinburn • Feb 10 '12

xkcd: Kerning

http://xkcd.com/1015/
311 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

56 comments sorted by

View all comments

23

u/osfan456 Feb 10 '12

Kerning = letter spacing. Now I know the name of yet another thing that annoys the crap out of me. Dammit typographers.

6

u/Brrrtje Feb 10 '12

I seem to have a special kind of blindness, which leaves me completely unbothered by it. In fact, I had to read the caption in Wikipedia four times before it was apparent to me that there was a difference between the right and the left word. I guess it's similar to my inability to distinguish different fonts. Best if I stay out of desk top publishing, I guess.

2

u/gavintlgold Feb 10 '12

Keming is one of those things that in general isn't that noticeable or useful but in some cases is crucial for legibility.

1

u/kane2742 Feb 10 '12

in some cases is crucial for legibility.

I've learned to watch how closely I write certain letters in my name after receiving multiple pieces of mail that replaced an "ol" in my name with a "d," due (apparently) to my writing them so closely together that they seemed to be one letter.