Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Making All Lines in a Paragraph the Same Height.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 31, 2017)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, and 2013
If you discover that all the lines in a paragraph do not appear to be the same height, it is probably because the line spacing option you are using for the paragraph is set incorrectly. If you use Auto line spacing (from the Paragraph formatting dialog box) for a paragraph, Word calculates what the largest letters are on the line, and then adjusts the line height (leading) to compensate for the character size. If the characters on one line are a bit larger than the characters on another line, then the lines in the paragraph appear to be spaced differently.
To overcome this potential problem, you should always use the Exactly setting for Line Spacing, and then specify a point size for the spacing. A good rule of thumb is to make the line spacing 120% of the font you are using in the paragraph. Thus, if you are using 10-point Times New Roman, then you would set line spacing at exactly 12 points.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8657) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, and 2013. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Making All Lines in a Paragraph the Same Height.
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2014-09-24 19:50:50
Emily Agunod
I tried the tip above but it didn't work. What did work though is highlighting the sentences with the uneven spaces then select font and then font size. That did the trick.
2014-01-13 04:29:18
Peter Johnson
Surely, the problem here is to do with using only 120% spacing. This is a bit mean; we use 150%, i.e. set 10pt text at 'Exactly 15pt' line spacing.
We used exactly as a corporate standard for several years. The problem with this advice is the Word applies the 'exactly' rule to all paragraphs – even ones that contain diagrams. To overcome this needs a special 'picture' paragraph style which allows Word to calculate the correct height. The problem you then have is that people complain that their pictures 'disappear' – because they do not select the special 'picture' paragraph style. When we moved back to using 'At Least' spacing the complaints and problems disappeared.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here:
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