Typography

In typography, tracking is the process of uniformly increasing or decreasing the space between all glyphs (letters) in a block of text. It is commonly confused with kerning, but these are two separate concepts. Tracking is sometimes called character spacing or letter spacing, especially in reference to computer typesetting. A related concept is that of word spacing, which uniformly increases or decreases the space between words.

Logistics

In logistics, tracking is the process of uniformly building a track of objects that are forwarded to, processed for, applied in or disposed of usage. The obtained track hence is a map depicted or coordinates listed in real-time of the reckoned locations of the respective object.

Tracking originally is subject of reckoning, concerning setting up a track on other objects momentarily viewed from the observer's own location. A related concept is that of tracing, which uniformly describes the process of retrospectively generating a trace.

Tracking should not be used synonymously to tracing in logistics. Both terms are used in conjunction as Tracking and Tracing for imposing control on performing services of logistics.

Hunting and field sports

Tracking is the action of hunting an animal by following its footprints and other marks left by movement.

Similarly, tracking is the action of a dog following a scent trail. In dog sports, there are tracking competitions .

Computer music

Tracking is the art of creating tracking modules for the computer representation of music. See tracker

Finance

Tracking is a portfolio management tool, used for example by index funds, so that the portfolio value always mirror the evolution of a stockmarket index

Video cassette recorders

In reference to VCRs, tracking means the alignment of the magnetic tape with respect to the reading head. Particularly in earlier two-head VCRs, tracking was very important for proper playback. Most VCRs have controls for tracking, either manual, automatic, or a combination of the two.