If a font is letterspaced by a sufficiently large amount, pdftex will insert fake spaces between letters, which is obviously wrong: \pdfcompresslevel0 \pdfinterwordspaceon \letterspacefont\1\font 250 \1 AB \bye yields this: Td [(A)]TJ/F52 9.9626 Tf( )Tj/F1 9.9626 Tf 9.962 0 Td [(B)]TJ Bye, -- Robert