To provide a practical kerning process method which never puts characters on both the sides of a small character too close even when there is the small character present in a character string.

To arrange and adjust an object character closely behind a last arranged character, a character spacing calculation part 32 finds the spacing (character interval) between a 1st and a 2nd character when the three characters are arranged closely in order and adjusted, a character spacing adequacy judging part 33 which judges whether or not the found character spacing is smaller than a previously instructed reference spacing, and when it is judged that the judged character spacing is smaller (the 1st and 3rd characters are too close to each other), a spacing reduction quantity correction part 34 corrects one of the spacing reduction quantities of the 2nd and 3rd characters to reduce the spacing reduction quantity slightly, thereby preventing the 1st and 3rd characters from being tool close to each other.