Text Block Anatomy

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When you select a text block with the Pointer tool or move the Text cursor outside the text block, you can do several things to the block itself. Notice that the text's bounding box has eight control handles. If you use the Pointer on any of the corner points, you can change the dimensions of the text block. Use the middle side and bottom control handles with extreme caution. If you drag one of those handles, the text inside is modified vertically or horizontally, depending on which handle you choose to drag and which direction you moved the cursor. In essence, you add or remove leading (the spacing between lines of text), or you modify the letter spacing (space between letters and words). Unless you have a great text design in mind, these handles are better left "undragged."

Note 

You can get different letter spacing or leading by changing the appropriate setting in the Text inspector.

However, those same handles are extremely valuable in other instances. When you double-click a bottom handle, you can then stretch the text block to stretch vertically to fit the text you input. Add 16 lines of text and the block fits. Delete eight of the lines and the block becomes half the size vertically. Double-click the side handles to make the text block auto-expanding. If you're working on a document and can't seem to get the text block to resize to a different shape, chances are good that the block has been set to auto-expanding. Double-click the side or bottom control handles to convert the text block to fixed-size.

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