PowerPoint Character Spacing: Tighten Titles, Kerning

To change character spacing in PowerPoint, select the text and pick a preset from Character Spacing in the Font group of the Home tab, or choose More Spacing to enter an exact value in points. At 40 pt and up, default spacing makes a title look loose, and a headline that should fit on one line wraps onto two. When several people touch the same deck, titles of the same size end up with slightly different widths from slide to slide. This guide covers the presets and what they actually do, exact values and kerning, a size-based standard, and how to apply it to a whole deck at once.

Character Spacing, Kerning and Line Spacing

Character spacing (tracking) is the horizontal space added or removed between every character in a selection. Kerning adjusts the space between specific pairs of letters, such as "To" or "AV", using values built into the font; the OpenType specification's kern feature describes it as adjusting space between particular glyph combinations for optically consistent spacing. Line spacing is vertical space between lines and lives in the Paragraph group, not the Font group.

Spacing looks wide most often in three situations: very large titles, a font substitution when the chosen font isn't installed, and Justify or Distributed alignment, which stretches spacing to fill the line. Check those first; a small adjustment usually finishes the job.

How to Change Character Spacing

1. Select the right range and check the font

Drag across characters to change only those, or click the placeholder's border to change all text in the box. Shift-click to include several boxes. Before changing spacing, check the font name on the Home tab. If the font in the box isn't the one your template specifies, fix that first, since a substituted font has different built-in spacing.

2. Pick a preset from Character Spacing

On the Home tab, click Character Spacing (the AV button with arrows) and choose Very Tight, Tight, Normal, Loose or Very Loose. Microsoft's article on character spacing describes this as the basic method. The presets are coarse: Very Tight condenses by 3 pt, Tight by 1.5 pt, Loose expands by 3 pt and Very Loose by 6 pt. Normal resets the spacing.

Those steps suit big titles. On 18 pt body text, Tight is too much: letters start to touch and the line becomes harder to read. Keep body text at Normal, or reduce it by 0.1–0.3 pt with an exact value.

3. Enter an exact value in the Font dialog

Choose More Spacing, click the dialog launcher at the bottom right of the Font group, or press Ctrl+T. Microsoft's PowerPoint keyboard shortcut list gives Ctrl+T or Ctrl+Shift+F for the Font dialog. On the Character Spacing tab, set Spacing to Condensed or Expanded, type the amount in By, and click OK. You can go down to 0.1 pt, much finer than the presets.

4. Turn on kerning for large type

On the same tab, Kerning for fonts applies the font's own pair adjustments to text at or above the point size you enter. If a mixed-case title has uneven gaps, such as a wide space after a capital T, turn on kerning before tightening further.

Spacing Guidelines by Font Size

The larger the type, the wider the same spacing looks. A size-based standard saves you from deciding slide by slide. These are starting points for business decks; fonts differ, so test on one slide before applying to all.

All-caps titles go the other way because capitals packed tightly read as a block. The same applies to titles formatted with the All Caps effect in the Font dialog.

When a title wraps onto two lines

Work through it in order. First, shorten the wording: "First-Half Sales by Key Account and Second-Half Outlook" reads just as well as "Key Account Sales and Outlook." Then tighten spacing within the ranges above. If it still wraps, reduce the size by 2 pt, and do it for every title in that position so one slide doesn't stand out when you click through.

Worked Example: A Report for the Bank

A finance manager at a distribution company is finishing a half-year business report for the company's lender. Planning wrote the cover and section titles, finance built the revenue and cost slides, and sales added the key-account summary covering Brightway Retail and Lakeview Distribution, 20 slides in all. The 48 pt cover title wraps onto two lines, and section titles use Normal, Tight and Very Tight on different slides.

1. Select the cover title, press Ctrl+T, confirm the font, and set Condensed 1 pt on the Character Spacing tab. The title fits on one line.
2. Set the first section title to Condensed 0.4 pt.
3. Select it, double-click Format Painter in the Clipboard group, and click each section title in turn. Press Esc to stop. The keyboard route is Ctrl+Shift+C to copy formatting and Ctrl+Shift+V to paste it.
4. Leave the tables with account names and dollar amounts at Normal. Tightened figures push commas against digits, and $1,240,000 starts to look like a different number.
5. Open Slide Sorter and check that the section titles look even across the deck.

Format Painter copies font, size, color and spacing together, so only paint between boxes of the same size. When it's done, the cover fits on one line and every section title has the same density, so the reviewer at the bank reads the numbers rather than the layout. Next quarter, copy the file and update the figures.

Apply It to the Whole Deck

For long decks or monthly reports, put the spacing into the template. On the View tab, open Slide Master, select the title placeholder on the top master slide, set the spacing in the Font dialog, and click Close Master View. Every layout under that master picks it up. Slides where someone set spacing by hand keep their own value; select them and click Reset on the Home tab to return to the master. Select all slides except the cover and dividers and reset them in one go.

👉 How to Change Line Spacing in PowerPoint (Exact Values)

When Spacing Won't Change

The text is a picture. If clicking selects the whole object and no text cursor appears, the title was pasted as an image. Retype it as text.

The paragraph is justified or distributed. These alignments stretch spacing to fill the line, undoing any tightening. Switch to Align Left or Center in the Paragraph group, then adjust.

Only part of the text changed. Only some characters were selected. Click the box border to select all of it and apply again.

The master changed but the slide didn't. The slide still has manual spacing. Select it and click Reset.

Formatting is tangled from many edits. Select the text and press Ctrl+Spacebar to clear manual character formatting, then set font, size and spacing again in that order.

Differences Across Versions

PowerPoint for Microsoft 365, 2021 and 2019 on Windows and PowerPoint for Mac both have Character Spacing on the Home tab and the Font dialog for exact values; on a Mac, open the Font dialog with ⌘+T. PowerPoint for the web can't change character spacing, so open the file in the desktop app for this step.

FAQ

Q. Can I make characters narrower, not just closer together?

PowerPoint has no character width or scale setting. Choose a condensed version of your font, or tighten spacing slightly.

Q. How far can I tighten a title?

Stay within about 3% of the font size: around 1.5 pt for a 48 pt title. Beyond that, letters begin to collide.

Q. Should I tighten numbers in tables?

Leave tables with amounts and quantities at Normal. If a cell overflows, reduce the font size by half a point or widen the column.

Q. The spacing looks different on another computer. Why?

That computer doesn't have the same font and substituted another one. Send a PDF when the layout must stay exactly as you set it.

How inline AI Finishes Report Decks

If your reports are built by several people before they go out, inline AI opens the deck, sets title and subtitle spacing to a size-based standard, and leaves tables with figures untouched. It writes the same standard into the template's slide master, so the next report starts out consistent.