# Spacing between numbers and text in text mode

I am puzzled by the appearance of this tiny piece of text:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
12 to 15
\end{document}


It depends a little on the zoom level, but it's probably not just me who notices that the space between 2 and t is smaller than the space between o and 1. I know that LaTeX has monospace digits, but I was not aware that this extended beyond math mode.

Is there anything that one can do so typeset digits with a more balanced space around them?

• the default math setup uses digits from the default set font so they are exactly the same in text and math. the extra space is the left sidebearing of 1 so you can preceded 1 by \kern-something with some size to taste but it is not very automatic. the lm fonts have proportional digits, see tex.stackexchange.com/questions/247530/… – David Carlisle Oct 20 '15 at 23:40
• Would this \kern-something depend on the character that precedes 1, 2 etc. or could the correct value be figured out once for each digit? – bers Oct 21 '15 at 13:26
• mostly you could just use a fixed value (to equalize the sidebrearings) although optical effects of adjacent character shapes may mean you still want to add additional inter-character kerns just as happens in normal text. – David Carlisle Oct 21 '15 at 14:15

If Latin Modern is acceptable as a substitution for Computer Modern, you can use cfr-lm to access proportional figures as explained in the answer David linked to.

The tabular and proportional figures match in the case of the typewriter font since monowidth selects the mono-spaced typewriter option.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[rm={lining,proportional},sf={lining,proportional},tt={lining,tabular,monowidth}]{cfr-lm}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
12 to 15    &   proportional\\

{\tstyle 12 to 15}  &   tabular\\

\textsf{12 to 15}   &   proportional\\

\textsf{\tstyle 12 to 15}   &   tabular\\

\texttt{12 to 15}   &   tabular\\

\texttt{\pstyle 12 to 15}   &   proportional\\
\end{tabular}
\end{document}
`