Half text in word

There are a couple of settings that affect horizontal spacing
on the “Advanced” tab of the “Font” dialog. 
“Scale” is probably the best one for what you want. 
Select all the spaces between words
(you can handle the spaces between sentences differently if you want)

and click on the little symbol
in the lower right corner of the “Font” panel on the “Home” tab. 
This will open the “Font” dialog box. 
(On most desktop versions of Microsoft Word,
Ctrl+D will also do this;
I don’t know about Word 365.) 
Go to the “Advanced” tab, click on the “Scale” dropdown, and select 150%.

This will make the spaces 50% wider than normal,
effectively adding a half space between words.

Even though the “Scale” field has a dropdown,
you can type any number (up to 600) into the box.

You can get a similar effect with the “Spacing” field,
but that is measured in points rather than percent.

Selecting all the spaces like this is tedious. 
An easier method is to use Find and Replace to change the formatting:

Note: All screenshots are from Microsoft Word 2013. 
Text screenshots (“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”)
are using Calibri (Body) font, 11 pt., at a zoom level of 130%.

Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Fitting Text Into Cells.

You have worked long and hard on your page design, including a couple of tables that are just right. Then, along comes a need to add a bit more text into one of the tables. The result is that the text in a cell wraps and pushes everything else down a bit. Now your whole design is thrown off. You long for a way to automatically adjust the size of the text in a cell so you won’t have the wrapping and pushing occur.

Word provides a built-in option that may do the trick. Simply follow these steps:

1. Select the cell or cells that you want to format.
2. Make sure the Layout tab of the ribbon is displayed. (This tab is only visible if you first do step 1.)
3. Click the Properties tool in the Table group. Word displays the Table Properties dialog box.
4. Select the Cell tab. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Cell tab of the Table Properties dialog box.

5. Click on the Options button. Word displays the Cell Options dialog box. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The Cell Options dialog box.

6. Make sure the Fit Text check box is selected.
7. Click on OK to close the Cell Options dialog box.
8. Click on OK to close the Table Properties dialog box.

What Word does is to decrease the apparent size of the text so that everything fits. Word decreases the width of the text by «scrunching» (a highly technical term) the text together horizontally, without adjusting it vertically.

Author Bio

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen…