google-fonts/cc-by-sa/knowledge/glossary/terms/tracking_letter_spacing/content.md

Tracking is the spacing between glyphs applied to an entire piece of text. In CSS, this is called letter-spacing.


Too tight, just right, and too open.

Providing more open tracking—i.e., more space between the letters—usually helps with the readability of all-caps text. Negative tracking—i.e., a value less than “0”—is usually not encouraged unless the type is being set at very large (i.e., display) sizes.

Many novice typographers mistakenly talk about kerning when they actually mean tracking. Kerning is the customised spacing between two particular glyphs, whether that’s kerning pairs in the font itself (defined by the type designer, or a custom kern by the end user, such as in logo creation.

Note that some software (including browsers) may disable ligatures when kerning or tracking is applied.