Line spacing

Set paragraph spacing

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To adjust the spacing that comes before or after a paragraph, place your cursor in the paragraph that you want to adjust, and click Home > Paragraph Settings.

You can adjust the line spacing in a paragraph to be more tight, or more open. Place your cursor in the paragraph, and click Home > Line and Paragraph Spacing.

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Line spacing

I'm formatting my resume and I want to adjust the spacing.

Previously, I showed you how to adjust the spacing between lines. Now, I'll adjust the spacing

that comes before or after the paragraph.

I place my cursor in the paragraph that I want to adjust,

then, on the HOME tab,

I click Paragraph Settings.

I like to use the Spacing options in Paragraph Settings, because here I can specify

exactly how much spacing I want to add Before and After this paragraph.

I can look here, to see how this paragraph is currently formatted in terms of spacing.

I can see it's single-line spacing

and there's no space Before the paragraph,

but there's 12 pts of space After the paragraph.

To just the Before and After spacing, I can click up or down

or I can enter the number I want, for example, I can change this from 0 Before

and 12 pts After-ward to 6 pts Before and 24 pts

After.

By default, Word adds the spacing to this paragraph,

even if the text before and after this paragraph are the same style.

Now, I want that, so I'll leave this box unchecked.

If I don't like the way it looks,

I can go back to Paragraph Settings and change the spacing again or

I can always undo my changes by pressing Ctrl+Z.

Up next, I'll show you how to adjust spacing throughout the document.

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