Comments on: Word 2007’s extra space http://www.scsmallfirm.com/wordpress/2009/10/word-2007s-extra-space/ law practice management and more Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:00:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: Dixon Robertson http://www.scsmallfirm.com/wordpress/2009/10/word-2007s-extra-space/comment-page-1/#comment-113 Dixon Robertson Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:00:10 +0000 http://www.scsmallfirm.com/wordpress/?p=189#comment-113 When you modify Word in this way, you are attempting to impose WordPerfect's character-based formatting on an application that bases its formatting by paragraph. By doing this you disable one of Word's most powerful features: styles. The reason Word adds the line after a hard return (it's actually a 12-point space) is because the "normal" paragraph style is whatever default font your selected style set has; no paragraph indent; and 12-point spacing between paragraphs. If you don't like this format, change it in Paragraph (on the 2007 ribbon). F'rinstance, select first line indent, justified alignment, single space, and no spacing between paragraphs. Apply, then select your newly formatted paragraph. Right-click the "Normal" style on the ribbon and select "update normal to match selection." It will become your default normal style. (There are other steps to make this change "stick" when you create a new document, but I won't go there now.) If you are manually adding a tab at the beginning of the paragraph and an extra hard return at the end, you may as well use notepad as your word processor. If you want to become a Word lover you must learn styles. When you modify Word in this way, you are attempting to impose WordPerfect’s character-based formatting on an application that bases its formatting by paragraph. By doing this you disable one of Word’s most powerful features: styles. The reason Word adds the line after a hard return (it’s actually a 12-point space) is because the “normal” paragraph style is whatever default font your selected style set has; no paragraph indent; and 12-point spacing between paragraphs. If you don’t like this format, change it in Paragraph (on the 2007 ribbon). F’rinstance, select first line indent, justified alignment, single space, and no spacing between paragraphs. Apply, then select your newly formatted paragraph. Right-click the “Normal” style on the ribbon and select “update normal to match selection.” It will become your default normal style. (There are other steps to make this change “stick” when you create a new document, but I won’t go there now.)

If you are manually adding a tab at the beginning of the paragraph and an extra hard return at the end, you may as well use notepad as your word processor. If you want to become a Word lover you must learn styles.

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