Kerning is the manual adjustment of the spacing between two specific [glyphs](/glossary/glyph). A kerning pair is the same adjustment, but determined by the [type designer](/glossary/type_designer)—with the instructions embedded directly within in a [font](/glossary/font) file.

<figure>

![The word “WAVE" shown with some manual kerning adjustments to make the spaces between the letterforms more visually pleasing.](images/thumbnail.svg)

</figure>

Novice [typographers](/glossary/typographer) mistakenly talk about kerning when they actually mean [tracking (or “letter-spacing” in CSS)](/glossary/tracking_letter_spacing). Kerning is all about the customized spacing between two particular glyphs, whereas tracking is the spacing between glyphs applied to an entire piece of text.

[Turning on “kerning” via OpenType in CSS](/lesson/manual_kerning_is_rarely_required) enables the kerning pair data already in the font file. Note that it’s turned on by default in most modern browsers, but can be disabled with `font-kerning: none;`.