Microsoft Office Word 2003 Intermediate

SECTION 2

Applying Spacing

You can also set special spacing options for paragraphs. First, place your cursor in the paragraph you want to modify. Or, select multiple paragraphs. (You can also turn these options on before you start typing). Then, click the Format menu and click Paragraphs. We’ll see the same dialog that we used to modify alignment and indents; the portions applying to spacing are circled in green below.

The two options on the left hand side of this section allow you to set the spacing (in font point sizes) before or after a paragraph. You can either type in the text box or use the arrows to adjust the size. (You can enter a number anywhere from -2 to 2584.) Here are some examples:

The options on the right hand side let you choose pre-defined line spaces. Here’s an overview of the choices:

Single	Default line spacing, provides a small space between lines.
1.5 lines	Provides one and a half times the space of single spacing between lines.
Double	Provides double the space of single spacing between lines.
At least	Ensures a minimum amount of space between lines. This can be useful if you’re combining large and small text in a line. Enter the font point size in the text box.
Exactly	Sets the exact space between lines.
Multiple	Enter a multiple number in the At box to set spacing at a certain multiple of single spacing. For example, you would enter the number 3 for text to be triple-spaced.

The checkbox at the bottom allows you to remove the spaces between paragraphs of the same styles; we’ll get to styles in the next section. You can combine before and after spacing with line spacing, and you can combine all spacing options with indent and alignment options.

Let’s look at some spacing examples.