CSS: bolding some text without changing its container's size

Question

I have a horizontal navigation menu, which is basically just a

with the elements set side-by-side. I do not define width, but simply use padding, bec

Answer 1

I found that most fonts are the same size when you adjust letter spacing by 1px.

a {
   letter-spacing: 1px;
}

a:hover {
   font-weight: bold;
   letter-spacing: 0px;
}

While this does change the regular font so that each letter has an extra pixel spacing. For menus the titles are so short it doesn't present as a problem.