> I expected to get the same results for these two \showbox commands. Yes you should. Consider the following (as long as the 8bit lines of latin-1 get through the mail) It produces four identical results, each looking like: > \box0= \hbox(8.56377+0.0)x27.21558 .\T1/cmr/m/n/10 ^^c1 .\kern-0.83313 .\T1/cmr/m/n/10 ^^dd .\kern-0.83313 .\T1/cmr/m/n/10 ^^c1 .\kern-1.11084 .\T1/cmr/m/n/10 V \documentclass{article} \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} \showoutput \setbox0=\hbox{\'A\'Y\'AV} \showbox0 \setbox0=\hbox{\MakeUppercase{\'a\'y\'av}} \showbox0 \setbox0=\hbox{V} \showbox0 \setbox0=\hbox{\MakeUppercase{v}} \showbox0 \stop So somewhere you must have a definition that is inserting extra tokens that are breaking the kerns. David