General ⇒ Unusual Space between italicized Letters

[Singularity]

Does the space between the V and the K look unusually large? It does to me. The space between the D and the V is not nearly so large.

Code: Select all

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\begin{document}
Also note that $VK=DV$ and that
\end{document}

Why is it so spacey? How do I get it back to normal spacing?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

The combination of the shape of V and the italic shape should be the cause of the spacious apperance. The top right corner of the V and the bottom left corner of the K probably have a "normal" distance, but the shapes cause space. In normal text, this would be corrected by kerning. In math mode, that kerning isn't applied because variables are single characters and don't get the usual word kerning. You can see the normal kerning if you would write \mathit{VK}.

Stefan

[Singularity]

Thanks, it looks much better with \mathit{VK}.

But now I think that looks better for all of math. Is there a setting to make \mathit the default for all math mode code?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

I think there's not such a setting. In Math mode, TeX treats individual letters like individual variables, in contrast to text mode where several individual letters form a word with inter-character spacing. It would be strange to see a product of variables f and l as a fl ligature.

If you would like to visually improve your document, perhaps make it just for such extreme cases. Instead of \mathit you could write your own macro which calls \mathit, so you could easily change it later. For example, if you would decide later to call \textit instead, so only a single adjustment in the preamble would be necessary.

Stefan