Setting spacing before or after a paragraph

You might want to automatically increase or decrease the amount of space before or after a paragraph so that the document looks consistent and flows easily. This is especially important when typing a thesis. The secret is not to format the document beforehand so that the result is consistent.

Remember that this option replaces a certain point size of space either before or after each paragraph marker. Every time you press the Enter key after a heading or a paragraph of text, Word automatically adds a certain amount of space either before or after the new paragraph. The amount of space it inserts is controlled by the space before or space after settings.

Follow these easy steps to set the spacing:

  1. Highlight the paragraphs you want to apply the spacing to.
  2. To apply or remove the spacing, use the line and paragraph spacing drop-down icon. Select the desired option at the bottom of the list. Don't add spaces between paragraphs of the same style.
  3. To control the amount of space you would like either in front of or after a paragraph, go to the Paragraph dialog box. Right-click on the selected text and choose Paragraph…:

  1. The Paragraph formatting dialog opens.
  2. In the Spacing section, adjust the paragraph spacing options as desired by clicking with the mouse pointer on the up arrow next to the Before: option. In the case of the preceding example, we used 6 pt before the paragraphs.
  1. Add 6 pt of blank space to the After: field.
  2. Click on OK to save the change. Note the changes.

Here, we can see these changes applied to the preceding example paragraph:

If styles have been applied throughout a document when formatting, it is important not to add a space between paragraphs of the same style. To explain further, if I applied 18 pt of spacing (after each paragraph) to the entire document but do not wish to add any extra space after all the main headings (which I have used the Heading 1 style for), then this option comes in handy. Adding a checkmark to this option prevents space from being added after all the Heading 1 styles in the document:

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