SUMMARY
Kerning characters brings them closer together or pushes them further
apart. For example, you might kern the word "To" so that the "o" tucks
nicely under the top of the "T".
KERNING CHARACTERS IN MICROSOFT WORD FOR THE MACINTOSH
Word Versions 6.0 and 98
- Select the characters you want to kern.
- On the Format menu, click Font.
- Select the Character Spacing tab.
- Select the Kerning For Fonts check box and click Points and Above.
- To increase or decrease the space between characters, select Spacing and
select either condensed or expanded from the list.
You can change the default Expanded or Condensed spacing by typing your
change in the By box.
To kern all occurrences of particular letter combinations at once, use the
steps for Word 5.0 and 5.1.
Word Versions 5.0 and 5.1
To kern characters in Word, follow these steps:
- Select the characters you want to kern.
- On the Format menu, click Character.
- To increase the space between characters, select the Expanded option. To
decrease the space between characters, select the Condensed option. You
can change the default Expanded or Condensed spacing by typing your
change in the By box.
- Click OK.
Your text should move to reflect the change.
You can also kern all occurrences of a particular letter combination at
once. For example, you can kern all occurrences of the word "To" so that
the "T" and the "o" are closer together by doing the following:
- On the Edit menu, click Replace.
- In the Find What box, type To.
- In the Replace With box, type To.
- From the Replace With list menu, select Character.
- In the Character dialog box, set the desired kerning options, and then
click OK.
- Select the Match Case option.
- Perform the Find And Replace operation.
Word should replace each "To" with the word "To" kerned to your
specification.
NOTE: Word versions 5.0 and 5.1 allow you to decrease the space between
letters by up to 1.75 points. Especially with larger font sizes, this may
not allow letters to be kerned sufficiently tightly. For better results,
try the following method for Word 4.0 users.
Word Version 4.0
In Word 4.0, you can use a formula to kern characters. The Displace formula
allows you to move a pair of characters closer together or further apart in
increments of one point. You can then perform a global search for the pair
that you want to kern and replace it with your formula.
For example, a common kerned pair is "To". The formula for this pair is
"T\d\ba2()o", where the "\" is created by pressing the COMMAND+OPTION+\
keys, and "2" is the number of points you want the following letter to
move. Once this formula is created, use the following steps to change all
occurrences of "To" in your document:
- Select the formula and click Copy on the Edit menu.
- From the Utilities menu, choose Change.
- In the "Find What:" box, enter the pair you want to kern (in this
example, the letters "To"). Check the Match Upper/Lowercase option, if
applicable.
- Put the cursor in the Change To box and choose Paste from the Edit menu.
This puts the formula in the "Change To:" box.
- Click the Change All button to change all occurrences of "To" with the
formula.