How to Increase the Spacing Between Your Letters in InDesign

Use Adobe InDesign to adjust the appearance of text.

When you work on a document on your computer using InDesign, you may determine that you need to increase the spacing between letters. Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing application that enables you to edit and manipulate text and images to create documents for print and online. You adjust the kerning when you want to increase spacing between letters or words in a sentence, and you adjust the tracking when you want to loosen up the spacing for an entire block of text.

Instructions

1. Launch Adobe InDesign on your computer, and open the document containing text that you want to adjust.

2. Click the "Type" tool on the "Tools" panel to select it.

3. Click in between two characters for which you want to increase spacing, such as in between the letter "D" and the letter "O" in "dog." Press the "Alt" key and the "Right Arrow" key on the computer's keyboard simultaneously to increase the spacing between the letters.

4. Click to select a section of text if you want to adjust the spacing between words, such as a phrase or a sentence, then press the "Alt" key, the "Ctrl" key and the "\" key simultaneously.

5. Click to select a section of text if you want to loosen the spacing between all letters in a block of text. Type a numeric value in the "Tracking" section in the "Character" panel that is higher than the current value to increase the spacing.

References

• Adobe: Adobe InDesign CS5 and CS5.5 -- Using Adobe InDesign
• Adobe: Adobe InDesign CS5 and CS5.5 -- Kerning and Tracking