Line Spacing

Quick reference

• 00:05 In this lesson, I'd like to review a few line spacing options.
• 00:09 Line spacing simply refers to the white space between the lines of text
• 00:14 within a paragraph.
• 00:15 The line spacing options are found on the Home ribbon, the Paragraph group and
• 00:20 the Line Spacing button located right here.
• 00:22 You can see that there's a little check mark by the 1.15,
• 00:26 that means single space plus an eighth of the space.
• 00:30 Now, what exactly is a space?
• 00:32 The measurements are according to the font size you chose, it has nothing to do with
• 00:36 inches or regular measurements, it has to do with font measurements.
• 00:40 So here I've chosen Calibri size 11, so
• 00:43 the space between the lines is a portion of that size 11, and
• 00:47 since Microsoft has chosen 1.15 to be the default,
• 00:51 it means a portion of that size 11 plus an eighth.
• 00:55 And so it's one of those things,
• 00:57 it doesn't really matter what the measurement is, what matters is,
• 01:01 does it help you fit your text on a full page, or does it spread it out too much?
• 01:06 I'm gonna go ahead and triple-click this paragraph so you can see
• 01:09 exactly which one I'm looking at and I'm gonna hit the drop-down on this, and
• 01:13 I'm just going to toggle back and forth to the single-space.
• 01:16 Just watch that first paragraph, I realize everything else is adjusting,
• 01:20 just keep your eyes on the first paragraph 21.15, 1.0, 1.15, so single,
• 01:25 single and an eighth, single, single and an eighth.
• 01:28 You can see how the white space between the lines spreads out a little bit,
• 01:33 that is fine, that they use 1.15.
• 01:35 But if you ever have a document you're trying to fit on one page and for
• 01:39 some reason a couple of lines are overflowing to the second page,
• 01:42 you might want to just consider going single space on the entire document.
• 01:46 It makes that much of a difference on a long document, short document,
• 01:50 not a big deal, long document, could be a big deal.
• 01:54 Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and change that one to single space,
• 01:57 in the second paragraph, I'm gonna change this to double space.
• 02:01 Now again, I can triple-click just so you can see which paragraph I'm talking about,
• 02:04 you don't have to, to apply these, they're paragraph options.
• 02:07 So a single click inside the paragraph will apply this action, now,
• 02:11 I'm gonna go up here and I'm gonna go straight to the double space.
• 02:14 Double space traditionally is used for school, essays, or term papers, or
• 02:19 a long manuscript, where someone else is going to be reviewing it,
• 02:23 and making editing comments between the lines.
• 02:26 So that's why we use double spacing.
• 02:28 So you have an option here to have one and a half spacing,
• 02:32 gives enough room to still make a comment, but squishes more text on the page.
• 02:37 But traditionally, double space is right there.
• 02:39 I'm gonna go ahead and click that 2 to leave that at double spacing, and
• 02:42 I'm gonna teach you a trick.
• 02:43 To take this quickly back to single spacing, Ctrl+1 means single space, and
• 02:48 I just hit that on my keyboard, now I'll go to Ctrl+2, double space.
• 02:53 Now Ctrl+1 and a half, 1.5 is Ctrl+5, cuz the Ctrl+1 would be single,
• 02:59 and the 5 is the extra half, so just so you know that you can adjust it simply
• 03:04 with your keyboard without having to go to that Line Spacing button.
• 03:07 Now the third paragraph here is for you to experiment with.
• 03:11 Again, I'll triple-click to highlight it, and then, course it doesn't matter when I
• 03:15 start highlighting this list, that highlight goes away on that paragraph.
• 03:19 But, just go ahead and review and just apply these, now there is two and
• 03:23 a half line spacing and three, triple line spacing.
• 03:27 In all my years of office administration,
• 03:29 I've never had a need to use triple line spacing.
• 03:32 But, for some reason, Microsoft has put it in there, so that's fine and maybe you'll
• 03:37 have a use for it someday, at least you know it's there, and it's available.
• 03:42 So that's the lesson about line spacing.
• 03:45 To set this all back to regular, you would just highlight the entire document or
• 03:50 you could Ctrl+A, to highlight the entire document and
• 03:54 then very quickly Ctrl+1, for single spacing.
• 03:58 Ctrl+1 5, or just Ctrl+5 for one and a half spacing, or
• 04:01 Ctrl+2 will apply it to the entire double spacing to your entire document.
• 04:07 All right, go ahead and please practice with those so you become familiar with
• 04:10 what happens when you start playing with the line spacing options.

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