If you’re an advanced user of Word and the text is already formatted using one of the Styles (e.g. I run Microsoft Word 2016, but the method of applying kerning is the same for all versions of Word since 2011. The biggest offender are the commas, one is clearly separated from the preceding letter and the other is adjacent to the serif of the capital A. Let’s start with my resume header (using the Georgia font) - do you see the issues? In my experience, the automatic method didn’t make any difference to me and the manual method was the only way to achieve the result I wanted. The real way is to adjust the kerning in Word itself. Just don’t forget to hide actual text underneath the image in case a robot is reading your resume.
The foolproof way is to make your PDF a collection of images, so that the image presents the same way every time, irrespective of the engine rendering the PDF. So how can you solve kerning issues in Microsoft Word? In a well-kerned font, the two-dimensional blank spaces between each pair of characters all have a visually similar area.
Kerning adjusts the space between individual letter forms, while tracking (letter-spacing) adjusts spacing uniformly over a range of characters. In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning is my hammer, and all the spacing issues in my standard Georgia typeface are the nails.įor those unfamiliar with kerning, let me block quote an explanation from When you have a hammer, every problem has a nail that needs to be nailed down.