Adjust character spacing and formatting

Some fonts include ligatures, a decorative joining of two characters to form a single typographic character. You can use ligatures in your document if the font you’re using supports them.

You can turn on ligatures for the whole document, then turn them off for selected text, or turn off ligatures for the document then turn them on for selected text.

In addition to adding ligatures, you can make other adjustments to the spacing between characters, and change the spacing of text in relation to other text.

Turn ligatures on or off for the document

Click Document in the toolbar, then click Document.
Select the Ligatures checkbox (or deselect it if you don’t want to use ligatures).

Turn ligatures on or off for selected text

Select the text you want to change.
In the Format inspector, click Style.
In the Font section, click , then choose an option from the Ligatures pop-up menu.
- Use Default: Uses a subset of ligatures for the font.
- Use None: Uses regular spacing with no ligatures for the font.
- Use All: Uses all available ligatures for the font.

To remove ligatures from selected text, click More in the Text pane, then select the “Remove ligatures” checkbox.

Widen or narrow the space between characters

Select a text box or just the text you want to change.
In the Text pane of the Format inspector, click Style.
In the Font section, click , then use the arrows to change the Character Spacing value.
The default spacing is zero. Increasing the value widens the spacing, and decreasing the value tightens it.

If you selected text: Your setting affects only the selected text, so any new text you enter won’t be spaced the same way. If you want other text in the document to use the same settings, you can define a new paragraph style from your selection, then use that style for other text in your document.

If you selected a text box: Your setting applies to all of the text in the text box as well as to any text you enter in the text box after you apply the change.

Make characters superscript or subscript

You can adjust the baseline of characters to make them superscript or subscript. A trademark symbol is superscript because it’s raised above the trademarked term. In a chemical formula, the number of atoms is subscript because it’s lowered below the symbol of the atom. In Pages, you can make selected text superscript or subscript, then tweak the baseline of the text by small increments if you want.

Select the text you want to make superscript or subscript.
In the Text pane of the Format inspector, click the Style button.
In the Font section, click , then choose Superscript or Subscript from the Baseline pop-up menu.
To adjust the placement, use the arrows to change the Baseline Shift value.