Change the spaces between text

You can change the spacing between characters of text for selected text or for particular characters. In addition, you can stretch or compress an entire paragraph to make it fit and look the way that you want it to.

Change the spacing between characters

Selecting Expanded or Condensed alters the spacing between all selected letters by the same amount. Kerning alters the spacing between particular pairs of letters - in some cases reducing and in other cases expanding the space depending upon the letters.

Expand or condense the space evenly between all the selected characters

The dialog launcher button.

  1. Select the text that you want to change.
  2. On the Home tab, click the Font dialog box launcher

The Font dialog box launcher.

(circled in green in the screenshot below), and then click the Advanced tab.

Use the font dialog to specify whether your character spacing should be expanded or compressed

In the Spacing box, click Expanded or Condensed, and then specify how much space you want in the By box.

Kern the characters that are above a particular size

Kerning refers to the way spacing between two specific characters is adjusted. The idea is to give a better looking result by reducing the spacing between characters that fit together nicely (such as "A" and "V") and increasing the spacing between characters that don't.

The dialog launcher button.

  1. Select the text that you want to change.
  2. On the Home tab, click the Font dialog box launcher

The Font dialog box launcher.

(circled in green in the screenshot below), and then click the Advanced tab.

Allow Word to set kerning between characters that are of a certain font size or larger

Select the Kerning for fonts check box, and then enter the point size in the Points and above box.

Stretch or scale the text horizontally

When you scale the text, you change the shapes of the characters by percentages. You can scale text by stretching it or by compressing it.

The dialog launcher button.

  1. Select the text that you want to stretch or compress.
  2. On the Home tab, click the Font dialog box launcher

The Font dialog box launcher.

(circled in green in the screenshot below), and then click the Advanced tab.

Change the line spacing

To increase or decrease the amount of vertical space between lines of text within a paragraph, the best method is to modify the style the paragraph uses.

Right-click the Caption style in the Styles gallery to modify the formatting of your captions.

  1. Find the style you're using in the Styles gallery on the Home tab.
  2. Right-click the style you want to change and select Modify.

Modify the line spacing options in your style to adjust vertical spacing in Word.

Near the center of the dialog box you'll find the line spacing buttons that let you select single, 1.5x or double spaced. Choose the spacing you want to apply and click OK.

If you'd like to apply more specific line spacing to the style, clickthe Format button at the bottom left corner of the Modify Style dialog box and select Paragraph. The Line spacing drop-down lets you select or set more specific line spacing.

Use the Paragraph dialog box to set more specific spacing between lines of text

For more information on modifying styles in Word, see: Customize styles in Word.

See also

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