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Microsoft Word: Do Your Paragraphs Look Wrong or Inconsistent?
The Problem
In Microsoft word, the character-level formatting (font, size, bold, italic, color, etc.) determines how your text looks and the document-level settings (margins, headers, footers, page orientation, etc.) provide the overall framework, but it’s the paragraph formatting that shapes how your text is laid out on each page. This also means that if your document’s vertical or horizontal spacing appears wrong, taking a careful look at your paragraph settings may help you identify and correct the problems. What is a paragraph? An English teacher would probably define a paragraph as a group of related sentences that develops one main idea. In word processing, a paragraph is:
- All of the text after a paragraph break (or from the beginning of the document)
- up to and including the next paragraph break.
Pressing the Enter key (on Windows) or the return key (on Macintosh) enters a “paragraph break” into your document, which finishes the current paragraph and starts the next one. The text within a paragraph word-wraps between the left and right margins, according to the given paragraph’s settings. Units of vertical measurement Word sometimes uses the following units:
- Points: 72 points = 1 inch; abbreviated as “pts”
- Lines: When used as an absolute measurement, 1 line = 12 pts = 0.17 inches and it’s abbreviated as “li”; when used as a relative number (see “Line spacing,” below), a line is the current font’s natural line height
Revealing paragraph breaks, spaces, and other invisible (nonprinting) characters In order to examine a document to understand its formatting, I recommend using the “Show/Hide ¶” command (to toggle between showing and hiding invisible characters) which you can invoke in a variety of ways, including:
- Click the “¶” icon in the standard (Home) toolbar
- Windows: Type the Ctrl-Shift-8 keyboard shortcut
- Macintosh: Type the Command-8 keyboard shortcut
You will then see a ¶ symbol (known as the “pilcrow”) at the end of each paragraph, each of which represents a paragraph break. You will also see small “raised dots” that represent the space characters in your document, as well as other symbols for tabs, page breaks, etc. Anatomy of a paragraph A paragraph has the following basic settings: Alignment: These four mutually-exclusive choices control how the paragraph’s text is positioned between the margins
- Left: This puts the left edge of every line at the left margin, so the paragraph will have a “ragged right” look. This is a common look for simple documents, emails, web sites, business writing, etc.
- Centered: This centers every line between the left and right margins, with no extra spacing between words.
- Right: This puts the right edge of every line at the right margin, so the paragraph will have a “ragged left” look.
- Justified: This makes every line (except for the last one) completely fill the space between the left and right margins, with extra spacing inserted between the words on each line, so the paragraph will have a “rectangular block” look. This is a common choice for books, magazines, newspapers, etc.
Indentation: These values adjust the horizontal position (specified in inches by default) of the paragraph’s text between the margins
- Left Indent: This offsets every line away from the left margin by an additional amount.
- Right Indent: This offsets every line away from the right margin.
- Special—First line: This makes the first line have an extra offset from the left margin, a common choice for books, novels, essays, etc.
- Special—Hanging: This offsets the second through last lines by an extra amount from the left margin, typically used for numbered and bulleted lists (like this one).
- Special—None: No extra offset will be added.
Spacing: These values control the vertical space before and after the paragraph’s lines of text
- Before: This adds extra vertical space before the first line of the paragraph, specified in points by default
- After: This adds extra vertical space after the last line of the paragraph, specified in points by default
- Line spacing: This controls the vertical space after each of the lines within the paragraph, including the last one, specified as a decimal fraction (relative proportion) of the font’s natural line height (not an absolute measurement, like points or inches). The value “1” means the paragraph is single-spaced (i.e., no extra space is added), “2” adds one additional line to make it double-spaced, etc. You can enter any amount from 0.06 to 132. Values greater than 1 increase the space, values less than 1 reduce it.
Diagnosing unusual horizontal spacing Here’s my approach:
- Use the “Show/Hide ¶” command to reveal invisible characters.
- Look for extra spaces or tabs.
- Look for unusual or inconsistent alignment or indentation.
- Use the “Show/Hide ¶” command again to hide the invisibles when you’re done.
Diagnosing unusual vertical spacing I recommend:
- Use the “Show/Hide ¶” command to reveal invisible characters.
- If you see two consecutive paragraphs and you can’t explain the vertical space between them, first click and drag to select some of the text on the last line of the first paragraph.
- Then do the same with the first line of the second paragraph.
- In both cases, the selection highlight will include any space above or below that is “owned by” that line. Based on that, check that paragraph’s “Space before,” “Space after,” and “Line spacing,” and among those numbers you’ll probably find the explanation for the extra vertical space.
- Scroll to the end of the document and look for empty paragraphs, which can cause extra blank pages when printing.
- Use the “Show/Hide ¶” command again to hide the invisibles when you’re done.
Advanced paragraph settings: Line and Page Breaks Most of these advanced paragraph options control page breaks before, within, or after a given paragraph, and they can be useful for longer Word documents like books and articles. And, if you see unusual page breaks in your document, you might find the explanation by checking these settings. Consider using named Styles For longer Word documents (books, articles, manuals, etc.), the best approach to having a consistent design for your paragraphs is to create named Styles for each distinct type of paragraph in your document, and then use them as you write and edit. Then, if you decide to change your document design (the font, indentation, spacing, etc.), you can update the settings for the appropriate Styles, and then all of the paragraphs using those Styles will reflect those changes immediately, which can save a lot of work compared to having to update every paragraph manually. Where to go from here As always, if any of my advice seems too difficult to follow, I recommend that you find someone you know and trust who can help you.
- google: Microsoft Word paragraph indents
- google: Microsoft Word paragraph spacing
- google: Microsoft Word paragraph problems
- google: Microsoft Word show invisible characters
- google: Microsoft Word paragraph styles
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