Windows 7: Font Spacing Problem in Microsoft Office 2010

juanantoniod · 25 Aug 2011

Hello everyone,

In my Microsoft Office 2010 apps, and particularly in OneNote, is there any way to get the screen fonts for my displayed text to display the text better? (For example, it seems that the character spacing and kerning is off, and the spacing between letters is inconsistent.) What can be done to make this look better, or is this just a problem I must live with as a Microsoft Windows user?

As you can see from the screen capture that I have attached, I am having problems with fonts displaying kerning and letter spacing improperly in Office 2010 applications. While Windows has never been as good as Apple at font display, this seems particularly bad. As well, it seems worse in OneNote (the first paragraph in the screen clipping) than in Word (the second example).

While the character spacing is bad throughout, examples of specific words in the screen clipping, and their 'problem' are described in 3 instances below:

The second word, "there", has placed the "h" fully kerned with the "t", but the "e"s both have differing degrees of spacing between them and the surrounding letters.
In "Microsoft", the "M' and the "i" seem to be too close.

In "Windows", the "w" and the "s" are touching each other, an obvious problem with kerning.

I am using Microsoft's Arial font in 12 point, so I don't understand why this would be an issue. It is just bugging me enough to want some help with it.

Thanks for any advice that you can offer!

Imperfect1 · 25 Aug 2011

Try setting your font spacing using this method:

Open the document with the problem, put your cursor on the Styles (>) link, go to ‘Normal’ and slide your cursor all the way to the right to display the drop-down menu. Select ‘Modify.’ At the bottom-left of the screen select Format, then Font, and at the top of the screen select 'Character Spacing.' Follow on-screen directions.

Windows 7: Font Spacing Problem in Microsoft Office 2010

Font Spacing Problem in Microsoft Office 2010 problems?