pages
I want to add background to a specific word in Pages. I want to make a distance between this word and the edges of its background. Making distances horizontally on both sides of this word is more important to me. How can I add padding to a word in Pages?
PS: I know how to work the spacing section in Pages to add space before and after each paragraph. So it’s not my problem.
You can show the word count, character count, and number of paragraphs in a document. Show word, character, and paragraph count
Click 
View in the toolbar, then choose Show Word Count.
The word count appears at the bottom of the page.
Move the pointer over the right side of the word count, then click the arrows to see character and paragraph count.
You can choose one of these counts to display it (instead of word count) at the bottom of the page.
once word count in turned on, you can select a portion of text and it will automatically display the count for that selection.
Something you could try is installing LibreOffice and opening the Word formatted document there and immediately resaving it. I've found that LibreOffice is much more forgiving and saving a document through it will result in a file that Word will be able to open without issue. Same with Excel formatted spreadsheets that refuse to open in Excel.
I usually end up installing LibreOffice on every machine I use specifically for this reason.
Best Answer
If it is for one word and you are ready to abuse software features in unforeseen way then just enter two or whatever number of characters before and after the word and make their color same as background: