Since I consider bold letters a kind of emphasis to be rather avoided, personally I prefer most of the times to use in MS Word documents italics or expanded characters in single words or phrases when I need to emphasize something. In the case of italics everything is simple, but in expansion blank spaces become larger than I need.

For this reason I created this macro that applies different formatting to words and to blank spaces between words, when I select more than just one word.

The same expansion in words and spaces creates ‘huge’ distances between words, but this macro applies a 2 pt expansion in words and a 0.1 pt expansion in spaces between words. You can edit the macro in a simple text editor or directly in the Visual Basic Editor, if you prefer a different expansion ratio between blank spaces and word letters. Of course, you must associate the macro with a keyboard shortcut to use it easily.

Read this to learn how to import or export Word Macros in BAS files.

Download Expanded Words macro

Being yourself an author or student you will perhaps appreciate especially this feature, that the very structure of the book will teach you how to work. The book contains even chapters on how to prepare a document for professional publishers such as Amazon. Reading Steven Adams' Writing a book or thesis in Microsoft Word you are surprised realizing it makes you want to work -- to think, write, use Word and be creative!