Tech Tip for Writers #63: Don’t Like Double Space Between Paragraphs?

Tech Tips for Writers is an (almost) weekly post on overcoming Tech Dread. I’ll cover issues that friends, both real-time and virtual, have shared. Feel free to post a comment about a question you have. I’ll cover it in a future Tip.

Q: My Word 2010 came with a default for double space between paragraphs, but I don’t like that. I’ve tried to reset it to single space, but it doesn’t fix it. What do I do?

A: I don’t either. What was Bill Gates thinking? Don’t as many people start a paragraph with a tab indent as a double space between paragraphs?

Now I have to fix that every time I open a Word doc. Here’s how to do it (in Word 2010):

• Go to Page Layout
• Go to Paragraph, Spacing
• Make sure ‘after’ is set to 0–not 10.

To make this the default:

• Under the ‘Home’ tab, go to ‘Paragraph
• Click the little dot in the lower right corner
• Change the ‘after’ spacing to 0
• At the bottom of the dialog box, click ‘set as default’.

Now the world spins just a bit nicer.

Questions you want answered? Leave a comment here and I’ll answer it within the next thirty days.

More Tech Tips for writers:

Tech Tip for Writers #62: Emailing from Word

6 Tips That Solve Half Your Tech Writing Problems

12 Spring Cleaning Steps for Your Computer

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is the author/editor of dozens of books on integrating tech into education, webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, adjunct professor of technology in education, a columnist for Examiner.com and TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. You can find her book at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning.