InDesign CS5 Bible- P12: InDesign is a powerful tool that serves as the standard program for professional layout and design. The latest version boasts a variety of updates and enhancements. Packed with real-world examples and written by industry expert Galen Gruman, this in-depth resource clearly explains how InDesign CS5 allows for better typography and transparency features, speedier performance, and more user control than any other layout program. | Chapter 20 Specifying Character Attributes Leaving Space between Characters and Lines Typographers often pay as much attention to the space between characters words and lines of text as they do to the appearance of the characters themselves. Their concern about space is well justified. The legibility of a block of text depends as much on the space around it called white space as it does on the readability of the font. InDesign offers two ways to adjust the space between characters kerning and tracking as well one way to adjust spacing between lines leading. Cross-Reference InDesign also provides a way to adjust the space between paragraphs see Chapter 21. It also explains how to control the spacing between words which is part of paragraph formatting. Kerning Kerning is the adjustment of space between a pair of characters. Most fonts include built-in kerning tables that control the space between pesky character pairs such as LA Yo and WA that otherwise could appear to have a space between them even when there isn t one. Particularly at small font sizes it s safe to use a font s built-in kerning information to control the space between letter pairs but for large font sizes for example the front-page nameplate of a newsletter or a magazine headline you may want to manually adjust the space between certain character pairs to achieve consistent spacing. The Kerning controls in the Character panel and Control panel provide three options for kerning letter pairs metrics kerning optical kerning and manual kerning Metrics kerning uses a font s built-in kerning pairs to control the space between character pairs in the highlighted text. Optical kerning has InDesign look at each letter pair in highlighted text and add or remove space between the letters based on the shapes of the characters. Manual kerning is adding or removing space between a specific letter pair in user-specified amounts. The kerning method you use depends on the circumstances. For example some fonts include
