Expanded Character Spacing

Chapter titles in the beautiful book, Contemporary Botanical Artists (Sherwood, 1996), have expanded character spacing.  

Character Spacing allows you to increase the amount of space between each letter. This feature allows you to make certain words, phrases or titles stand out.

You can recreate this formatting Microsoft Word by selecting the text and formatting it as Expanded, 6pt. Google Docs does not support this feature (May, 2026), however it does include several fonts that have expanded spacing.

Try It – in Microsoft Word:

1. Select the text you want to format as expanded.
2. In More Font Settings, click the Advanced tab.
3. Drop down the options for Spacing and select Expanded.

Try It – in Google Docs:

1. Select the text you want to format with an expanded or condensed font.
2. Drop down the font options in the formatting toolbar and choose More fonts.
3. Type expanded in the Search box and select one of the expanded fonts.

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Shirley Sherwood, Contemporary Botanical Artists, (New York, Cross River Press, 1996), page 11.