Dreamboat on Word: Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003 (On Office series)

Spacing Between Paragraphs

If you want your long documents to be as compact in size as possible, and to use all of the features of Word as they’re intended, then stop using paragraph returns to put sufficient space between one line of text and the next.

Using paragraph returns to provide spacing between paragraphs unnecessarily bloats your document with unseen and unused characters.

Instead, use Space Before and After text.

For instance, the Body text style used in this document is formatted with 0 pts before and 12 pts after each paragraph, and line spacing of at least 15 points.

To change the spacing, first place your cursor somewhere within the paragraph text. Hit Format Paragraph.

Space before and after can be changed as shown in Figure 7-7.

Figure 7-7: Spacing Before and After, and Line Spacing

Note the selection arrows in the graphic on the preceding page. There is no need to use only the arrows; you can just as easily click inside of any box like this and type in your entry, then tab to the next box, or hit Enter to close the dialog.

Likewise, most boxes that show incremental measurements, such as points or inches, do not require that you enter that measurement's symbol. Simply type the value you want. I used this method to get the before and after spacing on this document.