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Kerning Underscore

Wei HuangWei Huang Posts: 93
in Technique and Theory
Do you kern underscores or is it important to not kerning them?
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Comments

  • Robin MientjesRobin Mientjes Posts: 133
    The only hard rule I know is to set them flush by default, because there’s a specific Microsoft guideline that says they should. Otherwise, I do kern them.
  • Hrant H. PapazianHrant H. Papazian Posts: 1,571
    Not kerning the underscore is just low.
  • James PuckettJames Puckett Posts: 1,675
    I space mine to match the en and then don’t kern it in case someone is using it like a bullet. 
  • Hrant H. PapazianHrant H. Papazian Posts: 1,571
    V_j
    That is all.
  • Thomas PhinneyThomas Phinney Posts: 1,825
    edited November 2017
    The reason to have them flush—or better, just slightly overlapping—is that people sometimes set rows of underscores as a quick "blank"... actually really common usage. Even by pro designers.
  • Hrant H. PapazianHrant H. Papazian Posts: 1,571
    Of course you could have it not flush... and use kerning for that. :-)  Especially if doing so reduces kerning work with all the other glyphs. I do that with the em-dash, and even the tilde (makes a nice wavy line).

  • Beau WilliamsonBeau Williamson Posts: 80
    Oh, now I want to kern all my tildes. Wavy line is great.
  • Mike WenzloffMike Wenzloff Posts: 85
    Beau Williamson said:
    Oh, now I want to kern all my tildes. Wavy line is great.
    So why not make an alternate for the hyphen. Use the tilde outline and set it to overlap? Then add it into an aalt, stylistic set, etc.
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