How To Change Spacing Between Lines In Word

Lesson 9: Line and Paragraph Spacing

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Introduction

Equally you design your certificate and make formatting decisions, you will need to consider line and paragraph spacing. You tin can increment spacing to improve readability and reduce it to fit more text on the folio.

Optional: Download our practice document.

Watch the video beneath to learn how to adjust line and paragraph spacing in your document.

Line spacing

Line spacing is the infinite between each line in a paragraph. Word allows yous to customize the line spacing to be single spaced (1 line high), double spaced (ii lines high), or whatsoever other amount you lot want. The default spacing in Word is 1.08 lines, which is slightly larger than single spaced.

In the images below, you can compare different types of line spacing. From left to right, these images show default line spacing, single spacing, and double spacing.

example of different line spacings

Line spacing is as well known equally leading (pronounced to rhyme with wedding).

To format line spacing:

Select the text you desire to format.
On the Dwelling house tab, click the Line and Paragraph Spacing command, and then select the desired line spacing.
The line spacing will modify in the document.

Adjusting line spacing

Your line spacing options aren't limited to the ones in the Line and Paragraph Spacing carte du jour. To adjust spacing with more precision, select Line Spacing Options from the bill of fare to access the Paragraph dialog box. You'll then have a few additional options you tin use to customize spacing.

Exactly: When you choose this choice, the line spacing is measured in points, just like font size. For example, if y'all're using 12-point text, y'all could use fifteen-point spacing.

At least: Like the the Exactly option, this lets yous cull how many points of spacing you want. Nevertheless, if you have different sizes of text on the same line, the spacing volition aggrandize to fit the larger text.
Multiple: This option lets y'all blazon the number of lines of spacing you lot want. For example, choosing Multiple and changing the spacing to i.ii volition make the text slightly more spread out than unmarried-spaced text. If you want the lines to be closer together, you tin can cull a smaller value, like 0.9.

Paragraph spacing

Just as yous can format spacing between lines in your document, you can adjust spacing before and afterwards paragraphs. This is useful for separating paragraphs, headings, and subheadings.

To format paragraph spacing:

In our example, we'll increase the space earlier each paragraph to split up them a bit more. This volition make it a trivial easier to read.

Select the paragraph or paragraphs y'all want to format.
On the Home tab, click the Line and Paragraph Spacing command. Click Add Space Earlier Paragraph or Remove Space After Paragraph from the drop-downward card. In our instance, we'll select Add Space Before Paragraph.
The paragraph spacing will modify in the document.

From the drop-downwards menu, you tin can also select Line Spacing Options to open the Paragraph dialog box. From here, you tin can control how much space there is before and after the paragraph.

adjusting paragraph spacing in the Paragraph dialog box

You can use Word'due south convenient Set as Default feature to salve all of the formatting changes you've made and automatically apply them to new documents. To learn how to do this, read our commodity on Changing Your Default Settings in Discussion.

Claiming!

Open up our practice document.
Select the the date and the address cake. This starts with April xiii, 2016, and ends with Trenton, NJ 08601.
Change the spacing before the paragraph to 12 pt and the spacing later the paragraph to 30 pt.
Select the body of the letter. This starts with I am exceedingly and ends with your consideration.
Change the line spacing to 1.15.
When y'all're finished, your folio should look like this: