# Why is there a different kern between delimiters and math characters compared to their italic text character?

Occasionally, I like to typeset lists using the $\left< ... \right>$ notation in order to account for larger contents. I noticed that there is a difference in kerning toward the closing delimiter, depending on whether the list contains mathematical items or a word in italics font. Broken down to a MWE, it looks like this:

\documentclass[varwidth]{standalone}

\begin{document}
$\left<\textit{element}\right>$\\
$\left< r,s,t \right>$
\end{document}


The kern between the t and > is much smaller in the text line than in the math line.

My questions are: Which factors contribute to this behaviour? Can I control the kerning in the first row so that it is exactly the same as in the second?

You can apply an italic correction \/ to the text:

\documentclass[varwidth]{standalone}

\begin{document}
$\left<\textit{element\/}\right>$\\
$\left< r,s,t \right>$
\end{document}


• I thought the italic correction was automatically inserted by \textit, in contrast to \itshape? Sep 22, 2020 at 16:18
• @FelixEmanuel I am going to take a guess and say that because there is no "text" (only math) following the \textit, the italic correction is not applied. For example, the italic correction IS applied if you were to input it as follows: \textrm{\textit{element}}. Here the exit from italic mode leaves you in text mode. Sep 22, 2020 at 16:29
• @FelixEmanuel I found this comment by egreg: "In math mode TeX applies automatically the italic correction in well determined situations. The addition is done only at the end of the subformula, so with $\mathit{A}\mathit{B}\mathit{C}\mathit{D}$ there's an added kern only after D (with a single character in the argument of \mathit TeX doesn't build a subformula, which it does with multiple characters)" to the answer tex.stackexchange.com/questions/16433/… Sep 22, 2020 at 16:35
• Thanks a lot! If I still see some very minor difference in, say $\left< x\right>$ and $\left< \textit{x\/}\right>$, these are probably to be explained by the different kerning for x in math and text fonts, right? Sep 23, 2020 at 16:33