single line spacing

[framfrog]

I've selected it but I keep getting 1.5 spacing
what gives?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

It's not actually double-spacing that is the problem. Word changed the
default to add more space between paragraphs, so that each paragraph
will be single-spaced, but between paragraphs, you get extra space.
Paragraphs are created every time you hit enter.

To change in just this document, select all, go to Format | Paragraph.
Look down to the find the Spacing: After field, and change 10 to 0.

To change this in all documents created from now on, change the Normal
style.

First, select Format | Style. Normal should be selected.

Click on Modify--make sure "add to template" is CHECKED. You'll see a
Format menu in the bottom of the dialog--select Paragraph from it, and
change the Spacing: After setting from 10 to 0.

 

[MC]

It's not actually double-spacing that is the problem. Word changed the
default to add more space between paragraphs, so that each paragraph
will be single-spaced, but between paragraphs, you get extra space.
Paragraphs are created every time you hit enter.

To change in just this document, select all, go to Format | Paragraph.
Look down to the find the Spacing: After field, and change 10 to 0.

To change this in all documents created from now on, change the Normal
style.

First, select Format | Style. Normal should be selected.

Click on Modify--make sure "add to template" is CHECKED. You'll see a
Format menu in the bottom of the dialog--select Paragraph from it, and
change the Spacing: After setting from 10 to 0.

By now it is pretty obvious that MS has made a decision that makes sense
-- to MS, and a bunch of purists... however, I'm pretty sure thaat most
users have got into the habit of Enter-Enter -- and this just confounds
us! Too bad MS just *did* it without offering a choice in Prefs.

 

[framfrog]

wonderful! thank you!

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

glad to help.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

By now it is pretty obvious that MS has made a decision that makes sense
-- to MS, and a bunch of purists... however, I'm pretty sure thaat most
users have got into the habit of Enter-Enter -- and this just confounds
us! Too bad MS just *did* it without offering a choice in Prefs.

Choice in Prefs would not be appropriate, really--it's the formatting of
a style rather than an app-wide setting. But I think it's a
win-win--either you learn to use space between paragraphs instead of
hitting enter enter, or you figure out how to customize Word, which
everyone should do. A Default button in Format | Paragraph would be
nice, though.

They also changed the font in the default style from Times New Roman to
Cambria--haven't seen anyone complain about that....

 

[John McGhie]

Well, if you want "Great looking Documents" like they promised on the can,
you have to have Styles that work. That presupposes those styles have some
leading applied.

If you use a different style, you won't get the problem.

If you reset the leading (Space above or Space below) on Normal style, you
are likely to have some "issues" with document themes

We could, of course, give you some other reasons not to use "blank lines".
They are a disaster if you are trying to format or paginate a document: if
you have blank lines in it, you never will get control of the formatting.

But there are still a few people stuck back in the glass typewriter days who
find old habits hard to break.

Tell you what: You manage to break ME of the habit of hitting two spaces at
the end of every sentence, and I will show you how to create single
paragraphs

Cheers

By now it is pretty obvious that MS has made a decision that makes sense
-- to MS, and a bunch of purists... however, I'm pretty sure thaat most
users have got into the habit of Enter-Enter -- and this just confounds
us! Too bad MS just *did* it without offering a choice in Prefs.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[MC]

Tell you what: You manage to break ME of the habit of hitting two spaces at
the end of every sentence, and I will show you how to create single
paragraphs

Maybe this would work:

Go into Auto Correct and create a new entry making " .[space][space] "
correct to: " .[space] "

And do the same for ? and !

 

[MC]

Tell you what: You manage to break ME of the habit of hitting two spaces at
the end of every sentence, and I will show you how to create single
paragraphs

Maybe this would work:

Go into Auto Correct and create a new entry making " .[space][space] "
correct to: " .[space] "

And do the same for ? and !

And if it *does* work, maybe keeping the default end of paragraph
spacing and making Word automatically correct two carriage returns
Correct to one might work... and if you can't get it towork within Word,
maybe something like TypeIt4Me or SpellCatcher could handle it.

That would let you keep typingthe way you always have -- two spaces at
theend of a sentence inyour case, two carriage returns in mine, and Word
(or something else) would quietly take care of things in the background.

OR... create an Apple Script that would automatically go through a
document and cleanthese things up once everything else was done.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Go into Auto Correct and create a new entry making " .[space][space] "
correct to: " .[space] "

And do the same for ? and !

Doesn't work. AutoCorrect uses space and punctuation to trigger an
AutoCorrect autocorrecting, so you'd wind up in some sort of vicious
loop, so you can't create an AC like that.

The solution to that one is using a macro to save a Find and Replace
that does the two spaces to one after the fact, and running it periodically.

Oh wait, no macros in 2008. But, hey, hallelujuh! There's a built-in
Automator action for F&R that should make saving a F&R easy! Slower
than my macro and I lost focus, but better than nothing.

 

[MC]

Go into Auto Correct and create a new entry making " .[space][space] "
correct to: " .[space] "

And do the same for ? and !

Doesn't work. AutoCorrect uses space and punctuation to trigger an
AutoCorrect autocorrecting, so you'd wind up in some sort of vicious
loop, so you can't create an AC like that.

The solution to that one is using a macro to save a Find and Replace
that does the two spaces to one after the fact, and running it periodically.

Oh wait, no macros in 2008. But, hey, hallelujuh! There's a built-in
Automator action for F&R that should make saving a F&R easy! Slower
than my macro and I lost focus, but better than nothing.

I'm resigned to the loss of macros, but I REALLY wish there was a way to
at least *simulate* the Recording of macros built in to Word. In other
words, make some kind of shell for AppleScripts... which ar a total
mystery to me, that I don't have the time to study and learn.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I'm resigned to the loss of macros, but I REALLY wish there was a way to
at least *simulate* the Recording of macros built in to Word. In other
words, make some kind of shell for AppleScripts... which ar a total
mystery to me, that I don't have the time to study and learn.

Ditto. Use Help | Send Feedback--unlike VBA, which is going to die
anyhow, recordable AppleScript might have long-term value.

I've got some replacements for the things I used--I'll get them public
in a little bit.

I get the impression that making AS recordable would have been a huge
job. Even Apple doesn't make it recordable--and the recorder tends to
record bad code. Nevertheless, totally agreed that without a recorder,
this situation is totally untenable.

 

[MC]

Ditto. Use Help | Send Feedback--unlike VBA, which is going to die
anyhow, recordable AppleScript might have long-term value.

I've got some replacements for the things I used--I'll get them public
in a little bit.

I get the impression that making AS recordable would have been a huge
job. Even Apple doesn't make it recordable--and the recorder tends to
record bad code. Nevertheless, totally agreed that without a recorder,
this situation is totally untenable.

I'm going to send feedback and use a couple of phrases of yours as if
they were mine!

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I'm going to send feedback and use a couple of phrases of yours as if
they were mine!

Feel free.

 

[MC]

I'm going to send feedback and use a couple of phrases of yours as if
they were mine!

Feel free.[/QUOTE]

It is done.

 

[John McGhie]

No Cigar! You have to change MY bad habits, not Word's

Tell you what: You manage to break ME of the habit of hitting two spaces at
the end of every sentence, and I will show you how to create single
paragraphs

Maybe this would work:

Go into Auto Correct and create a new entry making " .[space][space] "
correct to: " .[space] "

And do the same for ? and !

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[MC]

No Cigar! You have to change MY bad habits, not Word's

Ah, but that's where wecompletely disagree. The app should be shaped to
our demands, not the other way around.

 

[John McGhie]

Nah... You're getting circular here

I assume you understand Styles and Inheritance?

Normal style is "Style 0". Everything inherits from Normal by default. You
can (and for professional work, you 'should'...) break the inheritance up
into chains, as explained in Clive's Bend Word book.

If you do, you can then set Normal to zero leading if you wish, and obtain
exactly the function you desire, without screwing up the themes and document
parts.

Mac Word is designed for absolute newbies to produce DTP-like Church
Newsletters. The bit of the design that was intended for document
professionals is hidden below the first layer of the user interface.

If you wish, you can customise Word within an inch of its life, and you
should. The 'feature' that makes it far and away the most powerful word
processor in the world, is that customisability. You can build exactly the
tool you want, to do precisely the job you do, in exactly the way you work.
No other application comes close.

Admittedly, Microsoft has broken a lot of that in this release, which is
very much a rush job. But presumably they don't intend to leave it like
this. I hope not, for their sake... It's dead in the water the way it is
now.

But unless your forte IS church newsletters, you have to take the thing by
the horns and bend it to your will. If you don't, you have wasted your
money buying it. The best power tools in the shop won't help if they're all
left hanging on the wall in the garage

If you want a product that comes out of the box designed to do your job,
keep looking. Microsoft Office ain't it. Such a product would be in the
$15,000 a copy range, because Microsoft would have to do all the work.

But this product is designed so that you can customise it exactly for your
purposes. If you wish to do that, stay tuned and we'll show you how.
You'll get exactly what you want, and have enough money left over to fund
your other bad habits.

Cheers

Ah, but that's where wecompletely disagree. The app should be shaped to
our demands, not the other way around.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[MC]

Nah... You're getting circular here

I assume you understand Styles and Inheritance?

Normal style is "Style 0". Everything inherits from Normal by default. You
can (and for professional work, you 'should'...) break the inheritance up
into chains, as explained in Clive's Bend Word book.

<SNIP>

Actually we agree. I customize Wordto my needs, and you customize it to
yours.

However we *should* be able to customize it to allow us to correct our
bad habits quietly in the background, but we can't, apparently, do that
for all our bad habits.

There is a program that (I believe) was originally based on Word Mac
(when it was called ScriptThing) called Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000 --
and that has a preference that allows you to choose automatic single
spaces or double spaces at the end of sentences. So if you select
Single, you can enter two spaces to your heart's content and get a
single space in the document-- and vice versa. If they can do it, why
can't Word?

Just one example of several that I can think of, but don't have the time
or energy to enumerate.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Just one example of several that I can think of, but don't have the time
or energy to enumerate.

For every example you can think of, there are other people who would
want something else, or would put a greater priority on Word helping
with a different bad habit. The designers have to juggle all that, plus
what's feasible in the code, plus the need to keep the program actually
usable and minimize its strong tendency to overwhelm. Plus whatever the
official thinking is on software usability.

So if you select
Single, you can enter two spaces to your heart's content and get a
single space in the document-- and vice versa. If they can do it, why
can't Word?

Dreamweaver does that also. Many web-focused programs will ignore you
typing multiple spaces. I can imagine the howls if Word took away the
ability to type multiple spaces in a row, or hid it in a preference.

I've used input managers that don't use punctuation and space as a
trigger for auto-correcting (or I think I have, not sure). They act very
strangely on my machine. Not correcting space-space is a small price to
pay for a generally excellent implementation of AutoCorrect, in my opinion.

By the way, you can tell Spelling and Grammar to flag two spaces as an
error, and then it will correct your bad habit when you run grammar
check. Plus you can Find and Replace, as mentioned before.

You can Help | Send Feedback, but I'd consider this really low priority,
myself--it would mean changing the basic code in AutoCorrect, when there
are already two workarounds to handle the same issue. Much better uses
of developer time.

Daiya