Printing.| 1. | a part of the face of a type projecting beyond the body or shank, as in certain italic letters. |
| 2. | to form or furnish with a kern, as a type or letter. |
| 3. | to remove a portion of space between (adjacent letters) in preparation for printing. |

British Dialect| 1. | (of a tree or plant) to produce or form kernels, hard grain, or seed. |
| 2. | to cause to granulate, esp. to granulate salt. |
| 3. | to cover with crystalline grains of salt; salt (meat). |
| 4. | Obsolete. a kernel, as of a nut; a grain, as of sand or wheat. |
kerning text
The process of reducing the spacing between certain pairs of letters to improve their appearance. When a font is created, each character is given a width that includes some space around it so that the letters don't run into each other when displayed or printed. This can be thought of as an invisible box around each character. Some pairs of characters such as A and V, look better if the boxes overlap slightly, bringing the characters closer together (but still not touching).
See also tracking, leading.
(1996-06-07)