equations - line spacing in paragraph

[Thijs van Bon]

Continuing my quest of getting a readable document containing equations I
stumbled upon the following problem: When I enter a small equation object
within a line of text, the distance to the line below is bigger than
standard line spacing. I don't really like the look of this, because a
paragraph will contain two different line spacings. Playing around with line
spacing and font sizes of the equation objects didn't give any nice results.

The best result I got was setting the line spacing to exact. The main
disadvantage of this method is that figures and multi-line equation objects
within the same style also get cropped to the exact line distance. To
prevent this from happening I would have to apply different styles to (a lot
of) figures and multi-line equations, which I find quite cumbersome.

Does anyone know an easy way to solve my problem?

Regards,
Thijs van Bon

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

That's just one reason why it's generally best to display any equations that
have to be created with Equation Editor; anything that complex will not work
well in a paragraph.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Thijs van Bon]

Hi Suzanne,

Thanks for your reply. I don't think I completely understand what you are
suggesting.
The equations I am talking about are created with Equation Editor (EE), but
inserted on a line in a paragraph of plain text. Are you saying that won't
work well?

Sometimes the object created with EE is just a single character with a line
underneath or over it. Many times I could just choose to use the standard
font with underline, subscript, etc. but I don't like the look of this.
These characters will always appear just a little bit different from when
they are in an EE object, which I also use (outside of a paragraph). To my
opinion this can be a bit confusing to the reader, so I'd like to avoid two
different 'looks'.

Regards,
Thijs van Bon

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Whenever you create an object whose height is greater than the default
paragraph line spacing, Word is either going to expand the line spacing or,
if you set an exact line height, truncate the object, as you have
discovered. You have a few choices: you can increase the line spacing for
all the text, you can display the equation object (put it on a separate
line), you can use an EQ field that will accomplish the same thing (though
if this is taller than the default line height, you're back where you
started), or you can reduce the size of the equation object. There is really
no good solution.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Thijs van Bon]

Thanks again,
I tried these things before. Increasing line spacing seemed like the most
reasonable solution to me. Unfortunately lines containing equation objects
still got expanded more than the others, even when line spacing was set to
abnormally high values.

Too bad there's no good solution for this, but thanks for your help.
Regards,
Thijs van Bon

 

[Darrin Paschke]

Hi-

I am not sure if this works in the standard equation
editor but it does in MathType (an upgrade to equation
editor from the people who make it)...

right click on the equation and select "format object"

select the "Layout" tab

under "wrapping style" select "behind text" or "in front
of text"

this makes the equation movable (with the mouse) and
eliminates the "extra line spacing".

the only drawback is that you have to create enough space
between the words in your document to place the equation
in there nicely (slightly time consuming but if you are as
anal about the way your documents look as I am, it is well
worth it)

Hope this helped

Darrin Paschke