Section 6: Line and Paragraph Spacing
So far in this program, we have focused on creating and working with sections and page numbers, and creating text styles for headings which are used by Word’s automated function for creating a Table of Contents.
The majority of work you will do in your document, however, involves typing sentences and paragraphs. To do this, you will mostly use the Normal style. Here, we will show you how to set up your Normal style so that the spacing between paragraphs is consistent throughout your document.
To begin with, type in some text under the Introduction heading of the first chapter as shown here. Make sure you have the Normal style selected.
As we have seen in an earlier section of this program, you can make modifications to styles by opening the Home ribbon, clicking on the Styles button, and selecting the Modify… option from any of the styles’ drop-down list.
In this case, we will be modifying the Normal style as shown here.
After you have selected the Modify… option from the Normal style drop-down list, the Modify Style dialog box for the Normal style will open as shown here.
Make any changes that you require to the Formatting options, and then select the Paragraph… option from the Format drop-down list.
In the Paragraph dialog box, you can control the appearance of the paragraph spacing and the line spacing. As with all style formatting, you need to ensure that the spacings you set complies with the formatting required within your institution or discipline. In this example, we are setting the paragraph spacing to 8 points at the end of the paragraphs, and the line spacing is set to 1.5 lines.
When you have set the desired paragraph and line settings, click on the Ok button to close the Paragraph dialog box, and click on the OK button of the Modify Style dialog box.
After closing the dialog boxes, your line and paragraph spacings will appear as you have set them.
Note that when writing paragraphs using the Normal style that you have modified, you only need to press the Enter key once to start a new paragraph with the set spacing.
You are now ready to continue typing into your document with all the styles set as required. Remember that you can modify any of the styles at any time as needed via the Modify Style dialog box – the style of the text that you have already typed will automatically change to your modifications throughout your document.
Follow the link to view ‘Line and Paragraph Spacing’ pdf version.
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