Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Learn how to control spaces between paragraphs all at one time and adjust spacing as needed.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
Exercise files
Download the Word document used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Paragraph Spacing .docx63.6 KB
Quick reference
Paragraph Spacing
Learn how to control spaces between paragraphs all at one time and adjust spacing as needed.
When to use
Controlling the space between paragraphs is very important. Spacing is necessary to help the reader determine where paragraphs start and stop. But pressing “Enter” on the keyboard to force that space is only one option. A better option is to use the Paragraph Spacing function in under the Layout ribbon.
Instructions
Layout Ribbon
Home Ribbon, Show/Hide Button
- Select the paragraphs to apply spacing to.
- Click Layout Ribbon.
- Check Spacing.
- Change the Before and After settings to your desired size.
- You can do this manually within the document by pressing the enter key between each paragraph as you type. This was the method used when typewriters were the main equipment in offices.
- To see if spaces have been placed manually or automatically with the Spacing feature, click the Home ribbon and turn on the Show/Hide button to view the background codes on the screen.
- 00:04 Paragraph Spacing is incredibly important, because without the space
- 00:09 between the paragraphs, all this text would be jammed together.
- 00:13 And it'd be very difficult for our readers to skim through the document.
- 00:17 So that is why we add paragraph spacing.
- 00:20 Well, where's that located?On the layout ribbon
- 00:22 in this section called Paragraph, it's on the right-hand side, Spacing.
- 00:26 As you can see, I've got this set for zero points before my paragraph,
- 00:29 six points after.
- 00:30 Well, what is a point?
- 00:31 Well, the size of the font.
- 00:33 Basically, how big of a space do you want between your paragraphs?
- 00:37 Currently, if you select the text on the screen,
- 00:40 you can see that I'm using 11 point font, but I'm using the 6 point spacing.
- 00:44 Well, let's go ahead and make that all uniform.
- 00:46 I'm gonna click Ctrl+Shift+End, to select all of my text.
- 00:53 I'm gonna make my font size 12.
- 00:56 And I'm gonna make my space between my paragraphs also a 12 so it's all uniform.
- 01:02 And there we go.
- 01:03 Now, the problem that just happened, if you can see in the bottom left,
- 01:06 it says Page 1 of 2.
- 01:07 I just rolled to the second page.
- 01:09 I'm gonna go ahead and hit my Multiple Pages button so
- 01:12 you can see, hmm, I just forced two lines off to the second page.
- 01:16 Well, I do like the 12 point font size.
- 01:19 Industry standard, where the letter is 12 points view.
- 01:22 Trying to make it fit, you would go 11.
- 01:24 If you don't like the person you're sending it to,
- 01:26 of course you would do a size 8.
- 01:28 That's a joke, everyone, that's a joke.
- 01:31 Okay, so let's go ahead and change this.
- 01:33 Instead of having 12 point fonts and then a 12 point space,
- 01:37 I'm gonna leave it at a 12 point font, but a 6 point space, okay.
- 01:41 And hit Tab, it all combined back to a one-page document.
- 01:45 And now let's go ahead and increase this so you can actually see what happened.
- 01:49 There we go, the spacing still looks nice.
- 01:52 Well, what did we do prior to this?
- 01:54 Are we forced to use the spacing?
- 01:56 No, you can actually hand type a hard return between all of these.
- 02:01 But I've got to see my codes first, so we can understand what's going on here.
- 02:04 So I'm gonna click on the Home ribbon.
- 02:06 Right over here, we have a Hard Return button, a Paragraph button,
- 02:09 a Show/Hide button, click.
- 02:12 And now, you could see every one of these paragraphs ends with a paragraph marker or
- 02:16 a hard return.
- 02:18 The space that I just applied is attached to that symbol
- 02:22 on every one of these paragraphs.
- 02:25 So that means you can click the entire paragraph, or triple-click to select it.
- 02:31 Maybe you just wanna click and drag that symbol.
- 02:33 The only time you can click and
- 02:34 drag these symbols is when you have the codes turned on.
- 02:37 At this point, I can go to my layout and I can change just this one to a zero.
- 02:41 It's not gonna affect everything, you can see the one I have selected.
- 02:45 Make that one a zero, hit Tab.
- 02:46 I just turned off the space between these two paragraphs.
- 02:50 Okay, this is very common to get in here and
- 02:52 adjust your spacing depending on your document.
- 02:55 Well right now, I do want it all turned back on, so
- 02:58 I'm gonna select the entire document again.
- 03:00 Come back right up here, and I'm gonna tell it ten points.
- 03:02 I think ten points would be fine.
- 03:05 As long as I personally am staying on my page 1 of 1, and
- 03:08 I'm not flowing over to the second page, I'm okay with that.
- 03:12 So anyway, that is how you adjust the spacing, apply the spacing,
- 03:15 fix the spacing.
- 03:17 It's just important when you're working with these advanced features,
- 03:19 which you are right now, have your codes on, but when you're done, turn them off.
- 03:23 Okay, thank you.
Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.