Line spacing determines the spacing between the individual lines of a paragraph.
You will find the commands for this on the ribbon tab Home | group Paragraph.
Applying via the icon of the command group "Paragraph"
You can use the icon 
to quickly and easily apply common line spacing.
Proceed as follows:
| 1. | Place the text cursor in the desired paragraph (or select several paragraphs). |
| 2. | Click on the small arrow next to the icon for the dropdown menu. |
| 3. | Select the desired line spacing from the proposed values in the menu. |
Tip: In the dialog box (see below), set a customized value in order to apply this value at any time via the command Last in the dropdown menu of the icon.
To customize the line spacing, go to the dropdown menu of the icon and select the option More or click directly on the icon itself. This opens a dialog box in which you will find further options for line spacing on the Paragraph tab (see below).
Shortcut key
For some common settings, there are also the following shortcut keys:
Command |
|
Windows/Linux |
|
Mac |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Automatic single line spacing (1 line) |
|
Ctrl+1 |
|
Cmd+1 |
Automatic one and a half line spacing (1.5 lines) |
|
Ctrl+5 |
|
Cmd+5 |
Automatic double line spacing (2 lines) |
|
Ctrl+2 |
|
Cmd+2 |
Additional line spacing via the dialog box of the command group "Paragraph"
In the dialog box of the group, you can customize the values for the line spacing.
To do so, proceed as follows:
| 1. | Place the text cursor in the desired paragraph (or select several paragraphs). |
| 2. | Click on the group arrow in the bottom right corner of the ribbon tab Home | group Paragraph to open the dialog box. |
| 3. | Switch to the Paragraph tab. |
| You will find the options for changing the line spacing in the section Line spacing: |
| 4. | First, use the dropdown list to select the method you want to use to specify the line spacing (see below). |
| 5. | Then enter the spacing in the edit box to its right. |
When you confirm with OK, the line spacing will be changed according to your settings.
Methods of specifying the line spacing
In the dialog box, you can choose which method to use to define line spacing in the dropdown list Line spacing.
The list has the following entries:
▪Single
| Automatic single line spacing. |
| Here, the optimum line spacing is determined automatically: |
| If you increase the font size in the paragraph, the line spacing will be increased accordingly. |
| If you decrease the font size, however, the line spacing will be decreased automatically. |
▪Multiple
| Multiple automatic line spacing. |
| This corresponds to the option Single and thus also provides automatic line spacing. You can increase or decrease this spacing by specifying the desired number of lines in the input field to the right of this option. |
| Some examples: |
| Enter "1.5" for lines to obtain one and a half times the automatic line spacing. |
| Enter "2" to get twice the automatic line spacing. |
| Enter "1" to get automatic single line spacing (corresponds to selecting the option Single). |
▪Exactly
| Exact line spacing. |
| Here, you can set the line spacing to an exact value in points. Here, the line spacing will not be automatically adjusted to the font size. |
| Tip: The rule of thumb for visually appealing line spacing is: |
| Line spacing = font size x 1.2 |
| In the case of a 10-point font, a line spacing of about 12 points would normally be appropriate. |
▪At least
| Automatic line spacing with a given minimum. |
| This setting corresponds to the option Single, but prevents any reduction below the specified minimum value. |
| Thus if you enter 12 points as the minimum value, the program uses automatic single line spacing by default. If the automatic line spacing is less than 12 points (because you are using a very small font size), an exact line spacing of 12 points is used instead. |
By default, the line spacing is set to Single.