Yesterday I got an e-mail with wider space between each letter...
So here is my question: Where is the option to change the letter-spacing in e-mails I write with the Apple mail App??
Thank you very much for your Answer!
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)
Spacing between letters is dependent on the Font used. You can change the font used by going to Preferences -> Fonts & Colors.
Hej Duane, thank you for your answer, but this was no help. Sorry, but I knew before how to change the font and that was not my question. Furthermore the answer is not right. The letter-spacing has nothing to do with the font I use... In the added pictures you can see two different screenshots from two different mails. In both Helvetica is used in 12 point, but the letter-spacing is different.
This is how I write the e-mail in the standard-spacing
This is the spacing in the emailI got
So it is the same Font but different spacing.
Duane is correct. The reason the spacing is different in the bottom picture is because it was sent as plain text.
Okay, but the font that is used in the bottom picture is not a monospaced one like "Courier" or "Menlo" or something like that. I would say it is also the Helvetica in 12 point. So how can you express the Helvetica as monospaced font or plain text then??
You don't have to assign a monospace font to plain text. However it does make it easier when you receive plain text mail to distinguish them from RTF mail.
You set the font for plain text messages in Font & Colors. Bottom row. Where it says "Menlo Regular 11" in Duane's screen shot.
RTF = Rich Text Format which means basically it honors formatting. Plain text has no formatting info.
Hhmmm, sorry, but this does not work. When I change the font for plain text to Helvetica (in the bottom row) and activate the box to use this font, the mail looks exactly the same than before.
It doesn't fix anything. If someone sends you a plain text email there will always be extra space between letters because plain text ignores kerning info. I never said choosing a non-monospace font would fix it.
Yeah, but I asked this question, because I want to send emails with extra space between the letters. And when I follow your hints and define my e-mail should be send as plain text e-mail in Helvetica, then send it to my other address, the received text should look like the one in the bottom picture, shouldn't it??
But it does not...
In Mail -> Preferences -> Composing did you set "Message format:" to "Plain Text"?
Yes, thank you, I did so...
You do understand that plain text messages are sent with no font defined. Therefore when anyone receives it, the display of the message will depend on the font used by their email client when it displays the message.
If you don't like the spacing provided by Helvetica, you should change your "Fixed-width font" setting back to "Menlo" or something else.
If you absolutely must control the spacing of the text, I recommend creating a PDF which contains your message and sending the PDF. Therefore the recipient will see the formatting exactly as you created it.
I'm back. I think we had a failure to communicate as was said in "Cool Hand Luke".
some definitions…
Monospace font: Equal spaces between the characters.
Fixed Width font: all characters are the same width.
Helvetica is neither a Monospace font nor a Fixed Width font so it will never look like it has extra space between the characters.
so, the only way in the Mail.app to compose something that appears to have extra space between characters is to…
a. use a font that has extra space.
b. add the "space" character between each letter
c. use an email client that supports kerning. I don't know what client it would be but it's not Mail.
Normally the only way to have your recipient see your message with wider letter spacing than normal is for you to compose the message in Rich Text and use the html letter-spacing property. I don't know of an email which lets you do this, but there may be one.
If you would View > Message > Raw Source on that email which you received with the wide spacing, it should be pretty easy to see what font was stipulated in the message and whether html letter spacing was used. Or you could email me that source an I could try to figure it out (tom at bluesky dot org).
My thoughts exactly. Not the email me part but the rest. 🙂
How can I edit the letter-spacing in mail?
