The space between individual letters can be controlled to an accuracy of 1/1000 em. This is useful for achieving layout effects such as fitting text into a particular area by reducing or expanding the spacing.


Infix M 1 em icon

Letter spacing is measured in ‘ems’ with 1 em being the width of a capital letter ‘M’ in any font.

Letter space & word space

Due to the nature of PDF documents, you can control the gap between words caused by space characters though this is generally not as widely used as letter spacing.

Editing text

Adjust Letter Spacing

To adjust the spacing between letters or words:

  1. Select the Text tool (Text tool button) from the tool bar.
  2. Select the text you wish to alter
  3. Choose Text->Spacing... to open the Spacing palette
    Infix Text Spacing Letter Space Word Space dialogue box
  4. You can control the gaps between letters and words by entering positive or negative values (to bring letters closer together).
  5. Press to quickly set Letter and Word spacing to 0.
Notes
  • Increase/decrease the letter spacing of selected text using the keyboard short cuts Ctrl+Shift+] and Ctrl+Shift+[
  • The word spacing value is ignored when text is fully justified.