ennerdale

Thanks everyone for the replies. 
I had been following the instructions found in Help under Kerning. None of them worked. However, today, after rebooting the computer, they do. Must have ben a little big lurking somewhere...
To adjust kerning: With an insertion point made by clicking between two characters in your text, do one of the following: From the Character panel, choose a value from the  Kerning setting, using the up and down arrows, the pop-up menu, or by typing in a new value. Auto will automatically kern characters by default. Positive values give expanded kerning, negative values give condensed kerning. From the Text menu's Spacing sub-menu, select one of the spacing options. Typically the advantages of kerning are most noticeable in larger text, so the most detailed attention is applied to kerning when creating display text such as headlines or text logos.
Keyboard shortcuts
The following keyboard shortcuts also allow you to adjust tracking or kerning: To loosen spacing in 10% increments, press . To tighten spacing in 10% decrements, press . To loosen spacing in 50% increments, press . To tighten spacing in 50% decrements, press .  
 
 

Thanks Walt, that's very helpful. I now understand how this works.
 
Richard