Character spacing is the amount of blank space between individual letters. You can adjust this spacing to make more or less text fill a text box. Character spacing can affect the appearance and readability of both titles and body text, and Figure 6.7 shows examples of the various character spacing presets that are available with examples of how it affects your text.
Figure 6.7: Character spacing, which you set from the Home tab, affects the appearance and readability of your text.
To adjust character spacing, select the text and then choose a setting from the Character Spacing drop-down menu on the Home tab.
To set custom spacing, choose More Spacing from the drop-down menu. This opens the Font dialog box to the Character Spacing tab, as shown in Figure 6.8.
Figure 6.8: Adjust character spacing and kerning using custom settings in the Font dialog box.
To set custom spacing, choose either Expanded or Condensed from the Spacing list, and then enter a number of points by which to expand or condense. As a point of reference, Table 6.1 lists the presets from Figure 6.7 and their expand/condense values; use these as a basis for fine-tuning.
Preset | Custom Spacing Equivalent |
---|---|
Very Tight | Condense by 3 points |
Tight | Condense by 1.5 points |
Normal | Normal |
Loose | Expand by 3 points |
Very Loose | Expand by 6 points |
You can also adjust kerning in the Font dialog box. Kerning decreases the amount of space between two letters, based upon their shapes. For example, when capital letters A and V appear next to each other, you can reduce the space between them without them overlapping because of their shapes. Kerning takes the shapes of the letters into account as it selectively tightens the spacing. Kerning looks best when you apply it to large text, and so the Kerning for Fonts setting enables you to specify a minimum font size, as shown in Figure 6.8, below which text is not kerned.