To eliminate this effect, some characters are kerned, i.e., the spacing between them is reduced. Automatic kerning is, however, often insufficient for high-end typography, and the typesetter must kern certain character pairs manually. Compare the unkerned and kerned versions of the same word below. The spacing between all characters in a word or a text is called letterspacing or tracking. At worst it will impair legibility and give the impression of illiteracy.
Punctuation is one area where different countries have different conventions for historic reasons.
The French use extra fine spaces before colons, semicolons, exclamation points, and question marks. Foreign-language typography often requires changes in the original design of the document. In such cases the typographer should suggest a solution that, if possible, preserves the integrity of the original design, yet does not result in nonsensical typography in the foreign language. Hyphenation and capitalization represent dangerous potential pitfalls for the individual attempting to set type in a foreign language. They can be supplemented by the user with exception dictionaries, or the typeset text can be edited manually by language-knowledgable individuals.