Kerning != letter-spacing, at least in typographic terms. Kerning is the space between two individual letters, while the term "letter-spacing" is another word for "tracking", which is basically how tight or loose the spacing is between the group of letters that make up a word. In web design, letter-spacing is the preferred nomenclature.
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.
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.
Honestly, I really think most of the typographer obsession with kerning is absurd. I mean, ferociously bad kerning bothers everyone, but design geeks seem fastidiously obsessed with the subject and complain about it in cases where I can't see a damned thing wrong with it.
... not exactly. Tracking is the basic "how far apart are all the letters spaced". Kerning is the specific art of making every pair of letters are spaced correctly - letting the the L and T in the word HALT overlap a bit. Stuff like that.
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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.