letter-spacing Attribute | letterSpacing Property

Sets or retrieves the amount of additional space between letters in the object.

Syntax

HTML	{ letter-spacing : sSpacing }
Scripting	object.style.letterSpacing [ = sSpacing ]

Possible Values

sSpacing

Variant that specifies or receives one of the following values. normal Default. Default spacing. length Floating-point number, followed by an absolute units designator (cm, mm, in, pt, pc, or px) or a relative units designator (em or ex). For more information about the supported length units, see CSS Length Units Reference.

The property is read/write for all objects except the following, for which it is read-only: currentStyle. The property has a default value of normal. The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) attribute is inherited.

Expressions can be used in place of the preceding value(s), as of Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5. For more information, see About Dynamic Properties.

Remarks

When specified as a positive length value, the letter-spacing attribute adds the specified value to the default spacing between characters within an element. A negative length value decreases the space between characters. Letter spacing can be influenced by justification.

Examples

The following examples use the letter-spacing attribute and the letterSpacing property to change the space between letters.

This example uses blockQuote as a selector to change the spacing to -0.2 millimeters for all blockQuote objects on the page.

<STYLE>
BLOCKQUOTE { letter-spacing:-0.2mm }
</STYLE>

This feature requires Microsoft® Internet Explorer 4.0 or later. Click the following icon to install the latest version. Then reload this page to view the sample.

This example uses inline scripting to set the spacing to 1 millimeter when an onmouseover event occurs.

<DIV STYLE="font-size:14" onmouseover="this.style.letterSpacing='1mm'">
:
</DIV>

This feature requires Microsoft® Internet Explorer 4.0 or later. Click the following icon to install the latest version. Then reload this page to view the sample.

Standards Information

This property is defined in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Level 1 (CSS1) .

Applies To

A, ADDRESS, B, BIG, BLOCKQUOTE, BODY, BUTTON, CAPTION, CENTER, CITE, CODE, COL, COLGROUP, currentStyle, CUSTOM, DD, defaults, DFN, DIR, DIV, DL, DT, EM, FIELDSET, FORM, hn, HTML, I, IMG, INPUT type=button, INPUT type=checkbox, INPUT type=file, INPUT type=image, INPUT type=password, INPUT type=radio, INPUT type=reset, INPUT type=submit, INPUT type=text, ISINDEX, KBD, LABEL, LEGEND, LI, LISTING, MARQUEE, MENU, OL, P, PLAINTEXT, PRE, runtimeStyle, S, SAMP, SELECT, SMALL, SPAN, STRIKE, STRONG, style, SUB, SUP, TABLE, TBODY, TD, TEXTAREA, TFOOT, TH, THEAD, TR, TT, U, UL, VAR, XMP