Kerning Lowercase to Capitals

Malcolm Wooden

Many thanks to you who commented on my last post about kerning letters to figures.

I would now like to know if anyone kerns Lowercase to Capitals as there seems to be an increase in modern language for acronims and words of this kind - e.g. eVid, CMoS, MoMA and my favorite CaPiTaLiZaTiOn.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Yes, I do as a rule, and see the refusal to do so as a romanticism of Art, versus the sober servitude of Design.
https://typedrawers.com/discussion/comment/35273/#Comment_35273

Probably the most important reason is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronvolt
Although there is now a country like that!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43821512

Mark Simonson

I usually do. I draw the line at lowercase to small caps, or the reverse.

André G. Isaak

Certainly one should not ignore names like McTaggart. And Irish and Bantu frequently contains lowercase letters followed by uppercase. So it's not just the rise of CamelCase which makes this necessary.

Bhikkhu Pesala

I also tried adding kerning pairs for period/comma with Uppercase, for example: .T 
However, my fonts already have pairs for Uppercase followed by period/comma, for example, T, or P. This created problems when kerning abbreviations like P.T.S. The kerning of period with P and T resulted in the P clashing with the T. 

I concluded that it is best stick to adding only kerning pairs with period/comma following uppercase.

Ray Larabie

The P.T won't clash unless you're over-kerning. Kern to P.TP.YF.TF.Y.Y.T.T.V.V.W.W etc. if the T's or Y's are too close, you're overdoing it. Also be careful not to over-kern У or Ч with the period class.

Adam Jagosz

As for kerning uppercase to period, I'd usually go for the minimal acceptable kerning value. Otherwise, things like T.H.I.S. look terrible because the distance between the letters (periods ignored) is not equal, resulting in something that could be approximated by T.H . I . S . (Unless you are brave enough to delve into contextual kerning...)

If we start to talk about things clashing, it's a sign we're far past the "overdoing it" mark.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

@Bhikkhu Pesala The case is more serious in Armenian, where mid-word floating punctuation marks mean you have to keep an eye on the two letters flanking it not getting closer than they would have been otherwise! What I do is have maximum negative kerns for each side of each mark, and they can't add up to more than the mark's set-width; the same tactic can be applied to what you're describing.

What we really need is kerning triplets... OK, I'll get my coat.  :-)

Paul Miller

There is also the case in various Scottish and Irish family names where you have a lower case 'c' followed by a capital letter.  Some of these look better kerned.