The issue that arose in Office 2007 - and carried into Mac Word 2008 - is
simply that MS [in their infinite wisdom] decided unilaterally that text
looked better using 1.15 line spacing rather than single. The Normal Style
was modified accordingly & the 'fix' was to simply redefine the Normal style
to use single. However, in both versions the matter was also corrected via
updates, so manually implementing the 'fix' is unnecessary if your software
is fully updated. This only applies to new documents created since the fix
or update has been applied. Any documents created prior to the change using
the original version of Normal will retain the 1.15 line spacing until the
style is amended to single line spacing in those documents.
There are a number of other influencing factors, though, such as the fonts
used in the documents. If they were created using the older fixed-width
fonts they may very well have different parameters imposed when font
substitution occurs. Printer metrics, screen resolution & other formatting
effects also come into play. If you want some amusement try this:
1- Create a new blank document,
2- type the following then press return: =rand(6,15) That will give you 6
paragraphs of 15 sentences each - a little more than one US Letter page),
3- Go to Format> Document> Layout, click the button for 'Line Numbers',
check the box labeled 'Add line numbers', then OK out of both dialogs
4- Use Command+A to select all, then change just the font several times &
observe the change in lines per page as you do.
Just as an example: With Courier I get 48 lines but with Courier New it
reduces to 46, whereas Times renders 45 & Times New Roman delivers 45 lines
but doesn't extend quite as far down the page.
The days of "characters per inch (cpi) and "lines per inch" (lpi) are gone
but if you have a need to regulate lpi have a look at:
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/BottomLine.htm
Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac
