Change spacing or alignment

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.

For information about changing the spacing between lines or paragraphs in a document, see Adjust the spaces between lines or paragraphs.What do you want to do?

Change the spacing between characters

Stretch or scale the text horizontally

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.

Expand or condense the space evenly between all the selected characters

1. Select the text that you want to change.
2. On the Home tab, click the Font Dialog Box Launcher, and then click the Character Spacing tab.

   

3. 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 point size

1. Select the text that you want to change.
2. On the Home tab, click the Font Dialog Box Launcher, and then click the Character Spacing tab.

   

3. 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.

1. Select the text that you want to stretch or compress.
2. On the Home tab, click the Font Dialog Box Launcher, and then click the Character Spacing tab.

   

3. In the Scale box, enter the percentage that you want.

   Percentages above 100 percent stretch the text. Percentages below 100 percent compress the text.

See also:

• Adjust the spaces between lines or paragraphs
• Double-space the lines in a document